10.

It was only after we’d landed in Goma that I really started to think about what we were about to do there, namely trek into the jungle in search of chimpanzees and gorillas. I have to admit I was looking forward to it: I’d have the opportunity to take some good photos. Our safari guide picked us up from the airport with a placard that spelled ‘Courtny’ wrong, and introduced himself as Innocent.

Amelia said out loud what I was thinking: ‘Unusual name. French, I suppose.’

Thankfully he took no offence, just said, ‘That’s right,’ with a big smile, and led us to a battered Toyota Hilux among the sea of motorbikes and pickups parked haphazardly in front of the terminal. He was quite young, thirty at most, with thin stubble on his chin but not his cheeks. It was as if his face was saying this was all it could manage for now, beard-wise, but he moved quickly and authoritatively, which persuaded me he knew exactly what he was doing. This guy was a former soldier after all.

A small girl was leaning against the pickup’s tailgate. Instead of telling her to clear off, Innocent introduced her. ‘This is Patience, my daughter and right-hand man. She’ll be coming with us. She’s learning how to track and is already ten times better than I was at her age,’ he said proudly. This Patience only looked about ten, but she stepped forward with a confidence that made her seem much older. She had the biggest, steadiest eyes I’d ever seen, and she gazed at each of us in turn without blinking, the absolute opposite of being nervous to meet us. Caleb had put his pack on the floor. Without asking him, Patience – who couldn’t have weighed much more than the pack – swung it up into the back of the pickup in one clean movement and motioned for the rest of us to follow suit. We climbed in ourselves after our luggage, at Innocent’s instruction. Caleb tried to assert his authority by telling us – pointlessly – that all this was normal. He’d done something similar before, many times. What ‘all this’ was I don’t know. ‘Rest assured,’ he went on, ‘my dad’s people will have done thorough due diligence on this safari outfit.’

Apart from cringing a bit – he’d said this right in front of Innocent and Patience – I didn’t react to this statement. The truth was, I didn’t know what ‘due diligence’ meant precisely. Amelia must have noticed, because she said, ‘He means Langdon’s done background checks on our guides, but we know your mum and dad did that before they booked us onto the trip, so I’m not exactly sure why he said it.’

‘Belt and braces,’ Caleb said, looking away.

Before we set off, Innocent introduced our driver, explaining that although he was brilliant at negotiating dirt roads he spoke no English. In the Toyota’s big wing mirror I saw the man had bloodshot eyes. He did speak French as well as the local language, but it seemed he did that grudgingly; after he’d fought the pickup through the weaving motorbikes to our hotel Xander offered him a ‘merci beaucoup’ and said something about the traffic and got just a grunt in reply.

I say hotel, but this place was nothing like where we had stayed in Kinshasa. That one was posh; this one was not. Like just about every other building I saw on our way into the incredibly busy town centre, it was low-rise with a corrugated roof, and bits of it hadn’t yet been built. Someone had put plastic flowers on the reception desk though, and the floor looked clean enough.

After we’d checked in, Amelia, Xander and I went to explore the hotel garden, which was also half finished. In the middle of an incomplete patio stood an empty fountain with rocks in the bottom. There being no chairs, we sat on the concrete lip, dangling our feet into what would have been water if the fountain had been full. It was late afternoon. In Kinshasa the heat had been constant and oppressive; Goma, today, was cool by comparison. The sky above us was the colour of a fresh bruise and there was a sulphurous rotten egg smell coming from somewhere. When she heard me mention it to Xander, Amelia said, ‘It’s because of the geography, not a lack of sanitation.’

‘Meaning?’ asked Xander.

‘We’re on the shore of Lake Kivu. Its depths are full of pressurised gas. Mostly carbon monoxide, which doesn’t smell, but there’s some methane down there too and that does. Both are lethal if released in large quantities.’

‘That’s all right then,’ said Xander.

‘But it could just be the volcano.’

From the look on our faces she could tell we didn’t know which volcano she was talking about.

‘Nyiragongo. It’s only twenty kilometres away. Hasn’t erupted since 2002, but when it last did it took out half the city. It’s still active.’

‘Great,’ said Xander, but I could see he was impressed with how much she knew.

Amelia looked for a moment as if she might be about to correct him, but she stopped herself and instead went off in a different direction: ‘But that’s still quite a long way for a smell to blow, I think. Actually I don’t know: how far do smells carry? A strong wind can blow for thousands of miles, but surely if it was a real gale it would disperse the smell? You don’t ever hear of tornados carrying smells. Breezes do though. Wolves and bears can smell things wafted at them from miles away, but we’re not them, we’re humans. I’ve never thought about it much before, but what’s the furthest distance a human being can smell, do you reckon?’

Amelia’s monologues make me smile. But neither of us had an answer to her question. I was staring at the green plastic fence running round the edge of the garden, thinking, or at least pretending to, when a movement caught my eye. From behind what looked like a water butt in the corner of the garden a rat ambled into view. I hate rats. This one was large and grey and in no hurry. Xander saw it at the same time as me. Without saying anything, we both leaned forward and each picked up a rock from the pile at our feet. I expected the movement might make the rat scuttle away, but it just stopped and eyeballed us. The horrible thing was less than ten metres away. I drew my hand back slowly, preparing to unleash, and Xander did the same. But I hesitated. The shot hardly seemed fair. It wasn’t until Xander threw his stone and missed, startling the rat – it jumped high in the air – that my revulsion kicked in. I aimed at the gap between the water butt and the fence and hit the rat squarely as it fled. I’d thrown a fair-sized stone. I’m not sure if you’d call it instant, but by the time the three of us had crossed the patio to have a look, the twitching was over, the rat dead.

Innocent, Patience and Caleb came into the garden at that moment.

When Caleb worked out that it was me who’d killed the rat he made a good show of being unimpressed. ‘Not really an act of conservation as such, was it?’ he said.

He had a point, but I didn’t bother answering him.

There’s no way I’d have touched the thing with my bare hands but Patience, completely unfazed, picked it up by the tail.

‘It was old,’ said Innocent. ‘Grey hair, look.’

Whether that made my having killed it better or worse I didn’t know.