The cost of living
How did a British grandmother come to be facing a Balinese firing squad while those she informed on look forward to a return to the high life? It could all have come down to cold, hard cash, writes Simon Parry
On a blisteringly hot February morning, visitors carrying blankets, water and plastic bags loaded with food and cigarettes loiter patiently outside the gates of one of Asia's most notorious jails: Bali's Kerobokan Prison.
As they each wait for their number to be called - upon which they will file into a tin-roofed compound and sit for an hour on a straw mat with the prisoner they have come to see - an unlikely looking visitor joins the grim procession.
Neat, smartly dressed and carrying an air of purpose and middle-class respectability, Hilary Parsons looks at first glance like a tourist who has taken a wrong turn from the strip of upmarket hotels and restaurants in the nearby resort area of Seminyak. But as she chats and laughs comfortably with prison guards and inmates who greet her with smiles and friendly banter, it becomes clear that she is not here by accident.
Today, as she has done almost every day for months, Parsons set out after breakfast from her HK$200-a-night guesthouse, a five-minute walk from the jail, to be with her younger sister, Lindsay Sandiford - a 56-year-old British grandmother facing the death penalty for smuggling cocaine.
Parsons had become estranged from her sister, who left Britain to lead a nomadic life in India. Last May, the latter was caught carry-ing 5kg of cocaine, worth nearly HK$20 million, in the lining of her suitcase as she flew into Bali from Bangkok. After seeing pictures of her behind bars, Parsons gave up her job and flew to Indonesia.
Since then, they have possibly spent more time locked in earnest conversation than they had in total before Sandiford hit the headlines.
The first British woman in a decade to face the death penalty anywhere in the world, Sandiford shares a crowded, windowless cell with 13 other women in a prison that has been home to the Australian drug smugglers known as The Bali 9 and the 2002 Bali bombers. Its ironic nickname among inmates is Hotel K.