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escorted to the front door by the sales associate without any suggestion that she should take her clothes
off. Once she was back on Piccadilly, she hailed a taxi and gave the driver an address in Lowndes Square. She checked her watch, sure that she would be back at the flat long before her father, who
would never find out that his watch and cufflinks had been borrowed for a few hours, and who certainly wouldn’t miss one of his old school ties.
    As she sat in the back of the taxi, Arabella admired the perfect yellow diamond. Jeremy had carried out her instructions to the letter. She would of course have to explain to her friends why
she’d broken off the engagement. Frankly, he just wasn’t one of our set, never really fitted in.
    But she had to admit she would quite miss him. She’d grown rather fond of Jeremy, and he was very keen between the sheets. And to think that all he’d get out of it was a pair of
silver collar stiffeners and an old Etonian tie. Arabella hoped he still had enough money to cover the bill at The Ritz.
    She dismissed Jeremy from her thoughts and turned her attention to the man she’d chosen to join her at Wimbledon. She had already lined him up to help her get a matching pair of
earrings.
    *   *   *
    When Mr Crombie left De Beers that night, he was still trying to work out how the man had managed it. After all, he’d had no more than a few seconds while his head was
bowed.
    ‘Goodnight, Doris,’ he said as he passed a cleaner who was vacuuming in the corridor.
    ‘Goodnight, sir,’ said Doris, opening the door to the viewing room so she could continue to vacuum. This was where the customers selected the finest gems on earth, Mr Crombie had
once told her, so it had to be spotless. She turned off the machine, removed the black velvet cloth from the table and began to polish the surface; first the top, then the rim. That’s when
she felt it.
    Doris bent down to take a closer look. She stared in disbelief at the large piece of chewing gum stuck under the rim of the table. She began to scrape it off, not stopping until there
wasn’t the slightest trace of it left. Doris then dropped it into the rubbish bag in her cleaning cart before placing the velvet cloth back on the table.
    ‘Such a disgusting habit,’ she muttered as she closed the viewing-room door and continued to vacuum the carpet in the corridor.

Don’t Drink the Water
    (from
Cat O’ Nine Tales
)
    ‘If you want to murder someone,’ said Karl, ‘don’t do it in England.’
    ‘Why not?’ I asked innocently.
    ‘The odds are against you getting away with it,’ my fellow inmate warned me, as we walked round the exercise yard. ‘You’ve got a much better chance in Russia.’
    ‘I’ll try to remember that,’ I replied.
    ‘Mind you,’ added Karl, ‘I knew a countryman of yours who did get away with murder, but at some cost.’
    *   *   *
    It was Association, that welcome 45-minute break when you are released from your prison cell. You can either spend your time on the ground floor (which is about the size of a
basketball court), sitting around chatting, playing table tennis or watching television, or you can go out into the fresh air and stroll around the edge of the yard (which is about the size of a
football pitch). There was a twenty-foot-high concrete wall topped with razor wire, and only the sky to look up at – but this was, for me, the highlight of the day.
    While I was confined in Belmarsh, a category A high-security prison in south-east London, I was locked in my cell for twenty-three hours a day (think about it). You are let out only to go to the
canteen to pick up your lunch (five minutes), which you then eat in your cell. Five hours later you collect your supper (five more minutes). At that point they also hand you tomorrow’s
breakfast in a plastic bag, so that they don’t have to let you out again before lunch the following day. The only other taste of freedom is Association, and