As my taxi drove away from Leamington, once more between sodden fields and bushes hanging with glassy drops of water, my nervousness grew and the sense of dread on approaching the hospital was even stronger than usual. We wound our way along the drive and Arden’s angular outline cleared through the mist. The barred upper windows were dark, though I could see some lights on downstairs. Outside it was very quiet once the car engine was switched off. I could hear not a voice or a bird. I pulled my coat round me in the freezing air, trying to imagine how cold it must be inside there, and walked up the steps and through the ornate doorway.

I waited for her for longer than usual, in the weak light from the hall’s high windows and the faint smell of polish. Those long radiators could not have been working, as I could see my breath on the air. I heard occasional footsteps echoing on the stone floors outside and, once or twice, the rattle of keys in the inner door. Eventually there came the sound of the door being unlocked again, the key being turned and hurried footsteps.

They came quickly into the hall, Olivia on the arm of the young nurse with the fringe who had brought her in the last time. She seemed agitated, bundling Olivia through the door at a pace with which Livy could hardly keep up. Part of my mind registered that as the nurse came in she turned to take a last anxious glance down the corridor. But my attention turned immediately to Olivia, to the ghastly whiteness of her face, her eyes enormous against the sunken cheeks, to her short hair straggly and unbrushed, and to her right arm which was bent at a protective angle across her body and encased in a fresh white plaster cast.

I was beside her in an instant. ‘What’s happened? What have they done?’

Automatically I found myself addressing the nurse. Olivia looked so absent. The nurse was apparently suffering such anxiety that she was unable to keep still and kept up a shuffling movement with her feet. ‘There may not be very much time,’ she whispered. ‘I think we’d better sit down.’

I was already feeling so overwrought that for a second I thought she was telling me Livy was dying. ‘What d’you mean?’ My breathing had gone jagged. ‘Why’s her arm in plaster?’

The nurse positioned Olivia in a chair, manipulating her like a doll, then turned to face me. Her features had a certain sweetness that I remembered. ‘It happened during the treatment. It does sometimes. When they give them the electric shock it makes the body seize up. All the muscles go into a kind of spasm – like a fit. They have to be restrained to stop them hurting themselves.’

I sat down. I felt as if my lungs were constricting. ‘You hold them down?’

She nodded silently. I took in several deep breaths. ‘Can’t it be stopped? The treatment, I mean?’