WE SPEND ONE LAST NIGHT IN THE DRC BACK AT Kony’s deserted hideout, and the next day the SEALs take us to a clearing about half a day’s walk away. There we are airlifted by helicopter and flown to Bujumbura in Burundi, where Jen is whisked off to a makeshift field hospital. Ash and I are met by a bustling, anxious lady from the Foreign Office. She explains what’s going to happen to us, but I can’t take anything in. It’s all happening too fast. For some reason I’m anxious all the time. I can’t rest until we’re all together again. There are American and NATO soldiers and vehicles everywhere. The search for us must have been huge.

I first catch sight of Marcus and Charis in one of the command tents, talking to a couple of African guys. I’m amazed to see that Charis is holding Marcus’s hand. Her other arm ends in a folded sleeve.

She drops Marcus’s hand when she sees us, screaming, “Rio! Ash!” and flies into our arms for a group hug. When we let go we’re all crying like babies. Charis takes a step back so that she can look at us, her face illuminated by this wide, infectious smile. “We couldn’t believe it when they said they found you all alive!” She laughs. “Where’s Jen?”

“We heard that they got all of you, but nobody’s told us if she’s here,” Marcus explains.

I tell him, “As soon as we touched down they took her off to the hospital to check her leg.”

Marky whoops loudly, punches the air, and does a little jig around Charis. Laughing, Charis pushes him out of her way and introduces us to the African men who are with them, Gibbs and Moto. It turns out they were the ones who first discovered Charis and Marcus limping down the hill toward their research hut. They looked like a pair of zombies, apparently.

“Especially me,” Marcus laughs. “Gibbs nearly wet himself. I don’t think they’d ever seen someone with my unique good looks before.”

“It was also getting dark,” the man named Moto says dryly.

“We are running a trial, reintroducing gorillas to the jungle. Every male is tagged, and we plot their locations daily on a virtual map,” Gibbs explains. “When the Americans came to pick up your friends we had begun to notice that Jenga, one of the males, was outside of his normal territory. This is very unusual.”

“We took them back to where we last saw you, the loggers’ encampment,” Marcus tells us, “but you were long gone.”

Charis adds, “And soon afterward, Gibbs called the lieutenant.”

“Yes. I went looking for the females and found the head of Jenga — the primary male. When we discovered the collar without its GPS tracker, we knew one of you had picked it up.”

“Don’t you just love all these guys in uniforms?” says a voice by the door.

“Jen!”

She’s on crutches and there’s a clean white bandage around her leg. She’s with this young African soldier wearing a Red Cross armband. I almost bowl her over when I go to hug her. She avoids Ash, but she’s not quick enough to stop me from throwing my arms around her. At first Jen’s a little stiff, but after a couple of seconds her head falls against mine. I kiss her cheek.

“Please,” she laughs at Ash over my shoulder. “You two could seriously use a shower.”

I stand back to look at her. She looks amazing. “Where did you get the makeup?” The girl looks like she’s just been made over for a Vogue cover shoot.

Jen jerks her thumb over her shoulder. “You think all these soldiers are guys? Well, duh. I just wanted to feel like myself again. Oh, by the way, this … is Joseph.” She won’t look Ash or me in the eyes when she says his name.

Joseph clears his throat and turns to leave. “I should be getting back to the hospital.” He pauses in the entrance, looks back at Jen with a pair of smoldering eyes, and asks, “I was wondering … can I see you again before you leave?”

Jen looks at Ash briefly and her smile falters. “No. I don’t think so,” she says.

Joseph nods but he’s embarrassed. “If you change your mind …”

“I won’t,” she says sadly, “but thanks for asking. It’s not you.”

Joseph looks puzzled and leaves — awkwardly.

Ash looks at me. He reaches out to touch her. “Jen —”

She steps away. “It’s okay, Ash. I’m fine, really. Rio’s amazing — and I’ll get over it eventually. I just don’t know if we can stay friends. It will hurt too much. You understand, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, I just wish —”

“Then let’s just leave it at that. It may change, but right now all I want to do is get out of here. I’m sorry.”

Ash and I don’t see her again after that.

“Jen requested a flight back to Cape Town and, as far as I know, has asked to be reunited with her family there,” Charis tells me the next day when I ask if she’s seen her. “She wanted me to tell you she was sorry but she couldn’t face saying good-bye.”

We don’t admit it, but we both know the reason. I wish she had said good-bye, though, because there’s a big black hole in me and I don’t know how to deal with it. The military psychologist puts it down to separation anxiety after spending the last few weeks looking out for each other under extreme stress. Perhaps that also explains why I seem to be getting more and more anxious by the day. I can’t rest until I find out what has happened to Gabriella and the LRA boys. I ask anyone who looks remotely official what is going to happen to them, but all anyone will tell me is that they are being “processed” by the Ugandan authorities. Whatever that means. When I ask if I can see them I just get strange looks and “We’ll see what we can do.”

Back home in the UK, whenever I ask the Foreign Office about Gabriella, no one will tell me anything. Now that I’m free it’s like nobody wants to deal with me. Mrs. Carter manages to find out from the American embassy that Gabriella is going to be repatriated to Uganda, and that the Americans are trying to find a teen refuge where she and her brother will get the help they need. I hope they do. They have been on a journey. Gabriella has carried that kid for miles, probably saved him from all sorts of horrors, and I can’t help but wonder — has she been saving the child, or has the child been saving her?

A couple of weeks after our rescue I get the news that they succeeded in finding somewhere for them in Entebbe, Uganda, but the place doesn’t have Internet. I try calling. I’m so nervous I nearly put the phone down before anyone picks it up.

“Gabriella Mwemba?” A middle-aged woman’s voice, very stern. The line goes quiet so long I’m about to ask if she’s still there, but just as I open my mouth, the woman says, “She was here, but she left after only one week.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“No … I am very sorry.”

“Why did she leave?”

A disapproving “That girl is very disturbed” is all I get. I have to bite my lip so I don’t say something I’ll regret. I mean — what did they expect? They’re a refuge, for God’s sake, surely they have experience looking after disturbed people. I’m gutted.

“If you hear from her — would you let me know? Please? It’s very important. Tell her Rio called.”

I don’t know if they ever do. There is no phone call, even though I spend days jumping up every time the phone rings. Over the next few months I manage to trace Gabriella to a few more Ugandan care homes, but I’m always too late. At one of them she even had run-ins with the staff and she ran away again, taking the little boy with her. I hate to think of her on the move, friendless and with nowhere to call home. She needs to know that there are people who care about her. But by the New Year the trail has gone completely cold. It’s like she never existed.