Purgatory

DAY 82 – MONDAY 8 OCTOBER 2001

11.00 am

All the papers have stories reporting that I’m about to be transferred to a D-cat. The Daily Mail mentions five possible prisons, so that they can eventually tell their readers they got it right. They didn’t. None of them bother to say that the police have dropped their enquiries. I suppose that would be asking too much.

12 noon

The allies have bombed Kabul for a second night, but there is still no news as to how effective the onslaught has been.

6.00 pm

Write for two hours, but am unable to concentrate because I know Mary is on a flight back from New York. I won’t be able to speak to her until tomorrow morning as I’m already banged up.

8.00 pm

Mr Nutbourne comes to my cell to tell me that he’s off on holiday to Cuba. He assumes I’ll have been transferred by the time he returns and says that he’s sorry to have met me in these circumstances, and wishes me well for the future.