’d never seen a diamond in the flesh. Well that’s not entirely true – I’d grown up with the sight of my mother’s gold band on her wedding finger. It was so familiar to me that when it was removed I couldn’t recognise her hands anymore, they looked bereft. The ring was very modest with maybe three tiny diamonds set deep into uncovered a story of how an advertising campaign in the 1940s marketed an idea to drive growth in diamond jewellery sales for De Beers, a UK-based mining company which owned a diamond cartel in South Africa.
