But did the do-gooders in government get that? No, in fact they came to Caloola one afternoon to tell us how normalisation was being rolled out everywhere and pretty soon all the mental hospitals would be closed and all the mental patients would be living in the community.

I stood up at that meeting and I said, ‘You must be kidding. You’re talking about putting people who eat their own poo out onto the streets? Can you imagine any of the patients we have here living next door to you?’

The do-gooder got nervous and laughed and said, ‘Oh, it won’t be like that. They’ll be home with their families,’ and that made me laugh because, like every nurse, I knew perfectly well that none of the patients at Caloola had any families who actually wanted them home, and maybe you think I’m exaggerating but it’s true.

Sure, we had plenty of people who didn’t mind visiting their relatives in Caloola – just like on the geriatric ward, we sometimes had a lot of visitors, especially on Sundays – but they didn’t want to take their crazy relatives with them when they left. They wanted to come in at around midday and park their cars and come up from the car park with their picnic blankets and cut sandwiches and a thermos of tea. They’d set themselves up under one of the gum trees, and wait while we nurses came out with their mad relatives and sat them down, and we’d usually supervise, to make sure the mad relative didn’t go through the visitor’s handbag and steal their wallet.

Then, after about an hour, the family would pack up and leave, and I knew how they were feeling: they were grateful to be able to get away and leave their problem with us, because they knew, deep down, that they couldn’t do what we did. And they didn’t want to do any of it. I suppose the reason I’m telling you that is to explain to you that for all the nasty things people said about Caloola – it was like a prison for people who hadn’t committed any crime, blah blah – we actually kept those people safe and we kept them fed and they could smoke and they could watch TV, and that was about the best anyone could expect.

Anyway, I’d better stop soon because it’s going to be lights out, but before I sign off, just so you know, I left Caloola the year before they closed it, so I wasn’t one of those who had to get turfed out. And also, whatever people say about Caloola, one good thing came out of that place: it was where I met Mark Delaney.

Snow

Chapter Ten

To my mind, it’s not possible to tell the story of how Snow ended up in prison without also describing the kind of man she picked for herself, back when she was still in her twenties and working at Caloola.

She calls that man Mark Delaney, and that’s fair enough – that became his name – but it’s not the name he was given at birth. Mark’s first name when he was born was Marcel, and his last name was Friedgut, but for reasons we can all probably understand, he hated that name and changed it pretty much as soon as he found out that he could.