Rosemary was an unassuming, quietly spoken woman, unremarkable apart from an air of sadness and loss. Rosemary had told me and many of the nurses that she would be better off dead than hearing any more of the terrible and taunting voices that kept her from sleeping. Better up there with her mother in heaven, she told me, then down here in the hell of the psychiatric ward with her voices.

Within a few days of being discharged, she was with her mother again. The nurses called a meeting in the communal lounge. There had been an accident. Rosemary had thrown herself in front of a train. The girl next to me at the meeting broke into tears.