“Must be about four or five months now. He spent weeks and weeks petitioning the government, and the Foreign Office, and the police, and anyone else he could think of to go and find you, but they all said there was nothing they could do.”
“Did you know the Togodian government told the British Government they would release you for fifty million pounds?” Amie’s mother asked.
“What?” Amie was staggered. Then a thought struck her. “You didn’t …?”
“No, not the reason why we downsized – it just seemed sensible with Sam having her own place and you ...” she trailed off.
“Me missing, presumed dead.”
“When Togodo asked for an amount that size, there was no hope of raising it.”
“But some charity did open a bank account and start a collection, but it never reached anything like that,” added Sam.
“I’m not sure the government would have been able to hand me over,” said Amie. “It’s a long time since I was in Apatu.” The rest of the family waited silently to hear more, but Amie was exhausted. She guessed they would call it post-traumatic stress disorder, but for now, all she wanted to do was sleep.
The next few weeks were a blur. Amie got up, dressed, and ate the food her mother put in front of her. She played a little with the children when Sam popped in, but she refused to go out, except for one brief visit to Jonathon’s parents which was so uncomfortable she couldn’t wait to leave. Her parents dragged her out to see a psychologist, but she didn’t want to face the world, and she didn’t even want to watch television. Certainly, in the first few days after she got back, she was the flavour of the month, with all kinds of experts talking about where she might have been, and how she might be feeling and how long it would take her to get back to normal.
What’s normal? Amie thought. Living in the bush seemed more normal than this world with its suffocating material possessions: too much food to eat, racing around to work to claw your way up the corporate ladder and earn more, and then buy even more stuff to show the world how well you were doing. It all seemed so pointless, so pathetic, like rats in the proverbial trap.
Amie no longer had an email address. Her box had jammed full months ago, so when she received a large, bright pink envelope in the post, she was intrigued. Inside was a large comic ‘Welcome Home’ card and a letter.
Dear Amie,
I guess you’re thoroughly fed up with all the media hype and may not want to hear from me, but I thought for old time’s sake I would write and ask you if we could meet up. I have a proposition you might be interested in. Name the time and place.
Best wishes
Dave – ex cameraman from Video Inc.
Amie read the letter twice before putting it back in the envelope. She remembered Dave as one of the best cameramen she’d ever met, and she was intrigued as to why he was no longer with Video Inc. They would have been mad to get rid of him, so what had happened? She felt the first spark of curiosity she’d experienced in ages. She’d refused to meet up with her other old friends, preferring to hide out in the house, but now this letter from Dave sparked her interest. There was a mobile phone number under his name, and without giving herself time to think, she went straight to the phone, replaced the receiver quickly before any of the media had time to get through, then dialled his number.
Dave answered on the third ring and he sounded just the way he’d always done when he was Amie’s hero when she worked behind the reception desk. They agreed to meet the following afternoon at a small café just around the corner from her parents’ place.
Amie saw her mother’s eyes light up when she announced she was going to have coffee with a friend around the corner. She saw it as a sign that Amie was on the road to recovery. The sessions with the psychotherapist had not helped at all, but maybe there was nothing wrong with her and she only needed time to heal. They’d taken her for a complete check up at the London School for Tropical Diseases, and everyone was amazed at how healthy she was, even though she’d lost a lot of weight.
If Dave was shocked by how thin Amie was when she walked into the cafe, he didn’t show it as he stood up to shake her hand. “How are you?” he asked gently.
“I’m not sure I know,” Amie replied, giving him a small smile. “I seem to be somewhere between this world and the next, though I know that sounds silly.”
“No, it doesn’t,” replied Dave. “Experiences, especially traumatic ones have that effect. I’ve seen it before.”
The waitress came to take their order and there was a short silence before Amie said, “I was surprised that you aren’t with Video Inc anymore.”
“No. I had an offer to go back to Africa and make a series for a large international company, and so I went freelance and things just rolled on from there.”
“Oh, I see,” said Amie.
“I left shortly after you went to Togodo and I’ve been on the move ever since, I’ve seen quite a bit of the world in the last few years.” There was a short silence then Amie held up the letter.
“And this? What did you ...?”
“First, I want to ask you what you want to do now. Have you thought of anything?”
“No. Part of me wants to go and look for Jonathon, but that’s not possible.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“My folks for one thing, I’m staying with them and I haven’t got much money, no job and no prospects – unless I sell my story to one of the media people.”
“And you don’t want to do that?”
“I’m not going to go on some talk show and be treated like a freak,” Amie’s voice rose in indignation, causing many of the other patrons to turn round and stare at her. Several of them began whispering and pointing.
Dave stood up suddenly, threw a note on the table and grabbed her arm. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll take a walk in the park.”
They left the café without waiting for their order.
It was one of those rare English afternoons when the sun shone and the temperature was in the low twenties as they entered the park and found a nearby bench.
“OK, let me tell you what I have in mind. I don’t want you to say anything until I’ve finished, and then I still don’t want you to say anything until you’ve had time to think it over. Understood?” Amie nodded.
“One way or another you’re not going to shake off the media totally. Even a couple of years down the road, your name will come up in some production planning meeting, and they’ll approach you again. A young girl missing in the wilds of Africa for a year and a half, is just too good a story to pass up. You do realise that don’t you?” Amie sighed and nodded again.
“So, my proposition is we go back together, for two reasons. To find out what happened to Jonathon and to tell your story on camera. This way, once it’s told, everyone will leave you alone, and at the same time, you might be able to find Jonathon, or at the very least, have some closure.”
“But – but I can’t,” exclaimed Amie.
“Would going back be too traumatic for you?”
“No, no it’s not that. I do want to go back,” exclaimed Amie, suddenly realising this was the truth. “But I’ve no passport, no money no resources. I don’t have a choice.”
“I’m offering you a chance, a way to go back,” said Dave quietly, “but I do want you to think about it. I want you to be sure because it won’t be easy.”
“I don’t even know about – about the logistics. Is the airport open in Apatu? Would they arrest me the moment I stepped off the plane? I wouldn’t know where to begin!”
“That’s where I come in, plus a small team on the ground here. And I wasn’t thinking of arriving, waving cameras aloft at a major airport – something a little more subtle.”
While Amie had longed to go back and look for Jonathon, until now, it hadn’t been a real possibility. Also, she wanted to know what had happened to all the other people she had grown close to. Dave’s words had reawakened her imagination, and al
l of a sudden, she couldn’t wait to get started.
“I don’t need time to think,” she said. “I do want to go back. Most people would think me crazy after everything that’s happened, but there’s something about Africa that pulls you and it won’t let you go.”
“I’ve only been there for maybe half a dozen trips for a few weeks at a time, but I do know what you mean. You long to return.”
“Yes, I want to know what happened to Jonathon and to Angelina and Pretty and William, they can’t all be dead.”
“There is something else I should mention, and you might not like this. You do know there was a price on your head from the Togodo government?”
“Yes, fifty million pounds,” Amie smiled ruefully. “No one person is worth all that.”
“The British Government wouldn’t pay a fraction of that for any hostage, you know their rules. But it occurred to me you should not go back as you.”
Amie gasped. “You mean a disguise, pretend I’m someone else?”
“Exactly. How does that sound?”
“Sensible. I could cut my hair short and die it black and wear dark glasses.” Amie laughed for the first time since she’d returned home. Dave’s proposal was a big adventure, and she began to feel alive for the first time in months. Not only would she be helping to make a world class television series, but she would be back in the place she loved, and maybe even re-united with the man she loved as well.
“I’ll do it,” she said firmly. “Just tell me what you want from me.”
“Whoa,” said Dave. “I want you to think this through properly. What I’m suggesting isn’t totally legal, although we wouldn’t explain how you got back in to Togodo, but ...”
Amie took Dave’s hand. “Dave, when you’ve been through all the things I have in the last months, this doesn’t frighten me. Yes, I do have a story to tell, and maybe it will make some of those stuffed shirts watching African wildlife programmes in their comfortable armchairs, sit up and think.”
Dave stared at her in amazement, and then he smiled and gave her a big hug. “I think we’re going to make the best television series in history,” he said. “How soon can we start pre-production?”
“How about now?” replied Amie with a smile.
The next few weeks were tricky for Amie. She hated to deceive her family and the few friends that had dropped round, but she was telling no one of her plans. Her days were spent at the small office Dave had rented, where she was introduced to Sandy his production secretary, Bill who was normally in charge of sound, Neil whose speciality was lighting, and Petra who was a general gofer.
Bill was over six-foot tall, with sandy hair which flopped over his face. He was quiet and shy and very different to Neil, whose roots were in the West Indies; his dark face was seldom without a smile, he was full of fun. Sandy’s parents had emigrated to England from Nigeria when she was very young, and though her origins were also African, she never remembered living there, so she was both curious and eager to see the land of her ancestors. Neil thought it unlikely that he would ever know from where in Africa his family had been taken as slaves, but like Sandy he was keen to see what he still thought of as his original homeland.
The two biggest decisions they faced was how many of them should go, and how. It was decided that Petra should stay, so they would have someone to keep in touch with back home. No one else was told about the project, Dave reckoned the fewer people who knew the better.
The next decision was whether they should masquerade as investors, and fly in openly and take it from there? Or, should they slip in from Ruanga and keep a low profile when they reached Apatu?
Amie was in favour of the second choice. She was fearful they would get stopped before they even had a chance to start, and if they were going to tell most of the story, then they would be able to take visuals of Ruanga, and they would be in the right place to interview the Mathesons and Tim and Alice Robbins as well. She thought both families would be happy to cooperate. But there was one thing she was adamant about.
“I think I can find the forest people again,” she said, “but I want everyone to promise their location is kept a secret. Obviously, the tribe nearer town knows where they are as some of the young men go to work for them now and again, but I would never forgive myself if they were later besieged with foreign camera crews and their lives were destroyed.”
Everyone understood and agreed.
“I can guarantee that,” said Dave. “All the people here you can trust, you have my word.”
Days were spent making lists and buying supplies. When Amie’s new passport arrived, she didn’t ask where it had come from. She had borrowed a black wig for the photograph, as she only planned to dye her hair the night before they flew out. Her parents were going be upset enough when she told them she was going to shoot on location in the wilds of Alaska where she would be out of contact for a couple of weeks. She hated lying to them, but thought it much better for their peace of mind.
She knew the more carefully they planned, the better the production, but it was quite thrilling for Amie to play a major part. After her time spent in both rural and urban Africa, she had lots of advice to give about what they would need and what was superfluous.
The next few weeks flew past, and when the tickets from London to Atari arrived, she realised it was really happening. She felt both apprehensive and full of excitement at the same time. It was either going to be a big adventure or a total disaster, and no one could tell which way it was going to go.
The night before they flew out, they checked into a hotel near Heathrow Airport, and Amie turned herself into a brunette. When she looked in the mirror, she hardly recognized herself and, on the way down to dinner, Sandy walked past her without even noticing who she was.
Dave, Bill and Neil had checked the camera equipment again and again. They were taking two small cameras with HD quality, and the lighting and sound equipment were the smallest versions on the market. There were also back up cameras which were even smaller, which could be used for filming in secret.
“We need to pretend what we have here, is only tourist stuff,” Dave reiterated. “We know that no journalists have managed to get into Togodo legally up till now, so we should be the first to get footage out.” Looking at Amie, he added. “You could almost pass for a local, with your tan, but I’ve packed a burka for you to wear, and a long black wig. I’ve also got some instant tan for Bill and myself, so we are not too conspicuous!”
“This is getting to be like a spy movie,” said Neil. “The Hollywood film makers would have a fit.”
When Amie had said goodbye to her parents in Castle Bridge, they were both worried she wasn’t ready to go back to full time work. They sensed an underlying manic quality in her behaviour, but she was an adult and they could hardly force her to stay at home.
The moment they opened the doors on the plane after it landed in Atari, Amie took a deep breath of warm air. She knew she had come home, although that was nonsense, she’d only lived in Africa for a few years, compared to all the time she’d lived in England.
There was the usual chaos at the airport, but at customs they barely glanced at the passports before stamping them and waving them through. Everything had arrived in one piece, and even while they were waiting for their luggage, Dave was busy filming using one of the hidden cameras he was carrying in his shoulder bag.
The drive into the city was a bit hair raising, but Amie was reminded of her own early feelings as she watched Sandy and Bill’s reactions when they saw the shack lands and the appalling poverty.
“Oh, those poor, poor people!” Sandy cried. “How can they live like that?”
“You do get used to seeing the poverty and the poor,” Amie remarked. “I know that sounds callous, but this is life for millions on the planet, in fact for the vast majority. In Europe, we live in a rarefied bubble.”
“Surely not,” said Neil, “how can you see all that and not want to help them?”
“Ami
e’s right,” Dave interjected. “There are too many to help, and if you just give hand-outs those are not appreciated and a lot of them will not attempt to haul themselves out of poverty through their own efforts.”
Amie looked at Dave in surprise. He understood the problems in Africa, he had a lot of insight for someone who had never actually lived there.
Once they were settled in their hotel, they gathered together for the evening meal. Amie was going to contact the Mathesons and explain what they wanted to do and ask that they re-enact the time she spent with them.
“I had fair hair then,” she told them. “I’ll look totally different!”
“That may be a good thing,” Bill replied. “You won’t be mobbed when you get back home.”
But where was home? Amie wondered. The moment she’d set foot back in Africa, she had immediately felt at home.
The Mathesons were only too happy to co-operate, and they spent the following few days re-enacting Amie’s arrival in the capital, shots of her talking to the family, and then walking into the building where the British Embassy had its offices. Amie didn’t dare walk right into the Embassy, but luckily it was on the fifth floor of a high-rise building, so all she had to do was walk in the downstairs entrance. Dave then took a close up of the embassy sign on the wall. They drove back to the airport and showed her walking into the departures terminal with one small case.
The following day they set off north to Umeru, the mining town where Alice and Tim Robbins lived. It was a weird experience for Amie, she was going back in time, repeating what she’d already lived through. This time she was the star of the movie, before she had only ever operated behind the camera.
In Umeru, they all received a warm welcome. Alice was thrilled to see her young house guest again. They spent several days filming a faithful account of Amie’s stay. With Sandy doubling up as makeup artist she turned Amie back into the waif and stray who originally appeared at the Robbin’s home. She made such a good job of wrecking the new wig that Amie suggested she’d looked better when she’d first walked out of the bush.
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