For reasons best known to themselves the firm decided to hold their global technical offsite in bloody Kenya this year. I had to go as bagholder to the technical partner from our site. It was supposed to be a reward, to show me that I was highly thought of, in the talent pool, going to go far, et cetera. Unfortunately nobody had told the technical partner, who is what I can only describe as a wanker of the most monumental proportions. All accountants are social morons anyway, but this guy took social ineptitude to hitherto unplumbed depths. Of course he’s a technical whizz, but I’m sure the real reason that he’s technical partner is to keep him away from the clients, because if they ever let loose this tact-free zone on the clients, they would soon all be heading for the competition as fast as their little Jaguars could carry them.

Anyway, he lost no time making sure that I knew that as far as he was concerned the most contribution I could hope to make was to shut up and ensure his Powerpoint slides were in the right order. I don’t know why he despised me so much – I hadn’t done anything particularly asinine. Perhaps he’s just one of those Neanderthal public school types who thinks all women are automatically inferior.

If ever I did anything wrong – quoted the wrong paragraph number, fumbled a bit with a slide – he would Tsk and roll his eyes and drum his fingers. While everyone else from all the other offices were busy carousing and carrying on and having a whale of a time, as you’re supposed to do at these conferences, he was keeping me up late in the business centre, honing his arsing presentations, as if anyone gave a flying fart about FASB’s latest flipflop on FAS133. And did he ever say thanks very much for all your hard work, well done for spotting the passthrough clause on the derecognition issue, come on, let’s reward ourselves with a drink in the bar? He did not.

The whole point of these conferences is not to share technical best practice and achieve global consistency blah-di-blah-di-blah anyway. It is to NETWORK. That means going out and getting pissed with a lot of congenial people, in my book. Since Thwaite obviously had not grasped this simple fact, whenever I managed to sneak a few minutes away from poring through the latest IFRIC pronouncements, I thought it my duty to the firm to go and carouse with my peers. Of course it meant that when I went weaving back to my room at midnight, I would have to face the blinking voicemail and accusatory e-mails, with a dozen more absolutely essential points that he needed me to check before 8am the following morning.

I don’t know when the robot ever found time to sleep because whatever time I sent a reply back, the response was always instantaneous.

At last the whole dreadful farrago wound its way to a close. On the last day there was supposed to be a choice between vegetating by the hotel pool or taking a flight in a light plane over the safari park. I think most people were too hungover - I mean, tired - to want to do anything but the former, but I put my name down for the microlight. It’s not that I’m particularly interested in giraffes or anything – it’s just that I’ve always really wanted to go in one of those small planes.

And guess who was the only other person who turned up in the hotel lobby for the Flying Safari? No! No! No! This is so unfair! But, hey, you know what? He hasn’t bothered to be polite to me this whole trip, I’m damned if I’m going to make polite conversation with him. I’m just going to pretend he’s not there. Let him see how it feels to be treated like invisible vermin.

We’d been told to dress in light comfortable clothing, so I was wearing this really nice pair of loose linen drawstring trousers that I’d got specially for the trip, some hiker’s sandals and a real white-woman-in-Africa loose linen blouse. The Dreaded Thwaite was in the tourist’s uniform of shorts, polo shirt and a pair of boatshoes that looked as if he’d been wearing them since his school days. Honestly, I don’t know what they pay the partners, but he can’t be poor. Why doesn’t he stop being such a stinge and splash it about a bit? I mean his watch is a Seiko, if you can believe it. A Seiko! No wonder they have to keep him away from the clients.
It was almost comical the look of dismay that crossed his face when he saw me in the lobby, which of course he didn’t have the nous to hide. Of course it was only how I was feeling myself, but I was naturally capable of hiding my feelings behind a mask of affability.

'I thought the pool would be more your cup of tea,' he said, in the manner of someone who had clearly reached the conclusion long ago that lying beside a swimming pool in a bikini was about the most that could be expected from someone of my limited mental acuity.

'Oh, no, I’m mad about the wild beasties,' I said airily. 'You know, giraffes, zebras, elephants, um, zebras.'

He raised one eyebrow and ostentatiously opened his Economist.

Sod you, you condescending twat, I thought, and raised my French Vogue. If he wanted to think of me as a feather-brained twinkie, then by God, I wasn’t going to go out of my way to impress him.

The flight was actually really good. I didn’t bother to talk to the Thwaite at all, just yattered away to Joshua, the pilot/guide, took my snaps and gloried in being up high in the big blue sky. The problems only started when Joshua said he thought we would head back early, because he didn’t like the look of the weather. And certainly the sky did seem to close in alarmingly quickly. And then he said he was going to fly up high to go over the storm or something, which he did, and the wind was starting to buffet us about and great cracks of lightning seemed to be going off all around us. Then oh my Christ one came really close and something sparked in the cockpit and the pilot gave a kind of yelp and slumped over the controls. I am not ashamed to say that I was scared pantless. I was absolutely rooted to my seat, my hands were welded to the plastic. Thwaite on the other hand leapt up and pushed the pilot’s body out of the seat and seemed to be trying to work out the controls, which, without wishing to be alarmist or anything, were slightly worrying as they appeared to be somewhat on fire.

'What are you doing?' I screamed. 'You can’t fly the plane! Put the pilot back!'

This was obviously complete crap and I can only say in my defence that I was insane with fear.

Thwaite, as he had been doing quite successfully under less stressful conditions, for the past week, was zoning me out completely. He’d managed to find a fire extinguisher and was spraying it over the controls, which thank God seemed to work, except that the charred remains of the instruments did not look as though they were likely to be of any use in getting us out of the air.

I started to try to get up to see what I could do, but he bellowed, 'Sit down!' The plane was spiraling downwards. I haven’t the faintest idea what he was doing or whether there was even anything he could do. The wind was still buffeting us about, lightning and thunder exploding all around, somehow the ground was coming up, far too fast, everything in the plane was shaking and juddering, there were no lights, I could just see the outline of Thwaite’s face in the stormlight, looking pretty grim, then he shouted, 'Brace!' – just like in the airline safety announcements – I saw treetops, I braced myself, there was a terrible crunching and slithering and scraping and screeching, then a jolt that nearly seemed to shake my seat loose and a blow and the whole plane tilted over, landed upsidedown and slid to a juddering halt.

I think I conked out. Anyway, when I came to, I was sort of dangling upside down. Somehow I managed to free myself and come thumping down onto what used to be the ceiling of the plane. There was no sound and thank God no flickering light of flames or anything. 'Mr Thwaite?' I croaked. I tried to make my way forward and stumbled over the body of the pilot. His eyes were open but it was pretty obvious that he was dead. Feeling pretty wretched I stepped over him and into the cockpit proper. 'Mr Thwaite?' Oh God, please don’t be dead. Please don’t let me be alone here in the dark with two dead people.

Thwaite was there, also conked out. I put my hand on his head and touched something sticky, but he was warm and breathing. I shook him gently. 'Mr Thwaite?' God, what was his first name? Charles! 'Charles?' No response. I thought maybe I should get him out of the plane just in case it was about to explode. The door had flown open on impact so it was just a question of somehow hauling his inert body out of the door and down onto the ground. A fully-grown unconscious man is incredibly heavy (and I am pathetically puny) so I’m afraid he might have got a further clonk as I dragged him out of the plane and he hit the ground rather harder than I’d intended.

Anyway, this seemed to help, as he moaned and started to come round, as I was hauling him further away from the plane by the armpits. I got him as far as I could then collapsed on the ground beside him, panting and shivering with reaction. Beside me, he stirred then opened his eyes, caught sight of me and winced. 'Christ!' he said. 'Sarah?' Which was annoying, since my name is Jane. Then, 'Where’s Joshua?'

'I think he’s dead,' I said meekly.

He looked irritated. 'Well, is he dead or isn’t he? We can’t just leave him there, for fuck’s sake.'

Obviously our recent near-death experience had done nothing to improve his temper, or perhaps lead him to reflect on how we are here on this earth for such a short time and it behoves us to treat our fellow travelers in this vale of tears with compassion and gentle consideration.

'He’s dead,' I said.

'Poor sod.' Pause. 'How about you? Are you alright?'

Well, thank you for asking!

'I’m alright,' I said. 'What about you?'

He sat up gingerly, holding his head as if it were soapbubble. 'I seem to be bleeding,' he said.