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section of the prison, known as La Muralla, Jack was beaten up by a skinny Bolivian prisoner and forced to hand over all his warm clothes. Afterwards he was too embarrassed to ask any of his friends to help get them back.

The talking thing was a front also. If you met Jack when he was partying, you would think he was the funniest guy in the world with loads of self-confidence, because he had hundreds of stories to tell and he only ever stopped talking to smoke his pipe or take cocaine. But when he wasn't on drugs, it was hard to get so much as a word out of him.

Jack took some getting used to, but when you knew him well, he was like a big puppy dog that needed lots of affection; once you had won him over, you could make him run around in circles and chase his tail, or fetch an imaginary stick you hadn't actually thrown. He became one of my best friends in San Pedro, but I was forever playing with him and tricking him into doing things he didn't want to do.

One time, about a year after I arrived at San Pedro, Jack came to my room crying. It was about nine in the morning and I could tell that he was coming down badly.

'Do you mind if I come in? I need to talk to someone.'
'Of course. What's wrong?'
'I'm fucked up, Thomas. That's what wrong. I'm totally screwed in the head.'

Jack wasn't suited to prison life at all; he wasn't tough enough. He came from a wealthy family and I don't think he had worked a day in his life. He certainly never lifted a finger in San Pedro. His cell was always a mess, because there was no one to tidy it for him. He started complaining that no one in the prison liked him. In fact, that no one had ever liked him his whole life. Not even his own father. He began telling me in detail about his family problems, which were mainly to do with his father, a tough businessman who had made it from nothing and was disappointed that his son hadn't turned out the same.

'You're a failure, son. Look at you. You can't even deal drugs properly,' the father had remarked on his first, and only, visit to San Pedro. After that, he pretended he no longer had a son and Jack's mother had to send him money secretly.

'But I like you,' I said.
Jack looked up at me suspiciously, 'You do? Really? You're not just saying that because I'm crying?'