They said sorry but offered no answers

people across Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire – was still failing to protect patients from harm.

News of Percy’s departure should have been some solace to bereaved families such as the Motes.

And yet no sooner had the announcement been made was it disclosed that she was being kept on inside the Trust in an advisory capacity on the same pay and benefits.

“To find she hasn’t gone is unbelievable,” says Mote, over a cup of tea in the beautifully kept garden of her home in the Hampshire village of Durley which she shares with her husband Steve and 17-year-old daughter Katie. Marion Munns, a retired nurse and super-fit 74-year-old, died on November 12 last year after suffering a severe mental health breakdown. She had fled the family home from an upstairs window, prompting a frantic search by Angie, her sister Kim, and father John. Later that evening, a body was found on the M27. While the exact circumstances are yet to be determined at an inquest, Southern Health has already admitted to Mote’s lawyers that it provided Marion with sub-standard care and would not contest legal action taken against it for negligence.

Around the August Bank Holiday 2014, Angie says her mother had started to complain of feeling unwell. When she went to visit, it was the first time she had ever seen her cry.

Their GP referred Marion to the older people’s mental health unit at Berrywood Ward at Southampton’s Western Hospital.

Mote was told her mother had suffered a “psychotic episode”.

In November 2014, Marion was discharged. Despite the fact that she could no longer cook or do the supermarket shop, Mote learnt the following spring from her mother that she had been signed off from the service.

Then, last summer, Mote and her sister Kim noticed a serious deterioration. She recalls one supper that August where her mother would down endless glasses of water, pace about in the garden and talk to herself in the upstairs bathroom mirror. Mote phoned the mental health unit at Berrywood Ward, but was told she had to go back to her GP and start the whole process again.

Mote and her sister sent endless emails and phone calls, but to little avail. On the afternoon of her death, Marion had phoned her daughters in a state of extreme distress. Mote says she rung the community mental health team at 4.20pm asking for urgent help, but was told to dial 999 as they were closing at 5pm.

By the time Mote made it round to her mother’s house, she had already escaped, crashing her car on the drive in the process and making off on foot.

In February, she received a letter signed by Katrina Percy, which she reads out in a faltering voice. Ms Percy offers her “sincere condolences and full and unreserved apologies for the events leading to your mother’s death”. It concludes: “I am deeply sorry that we failed her.”

At that, Angie Mote breaks off from reading and tears prick her red raw eyes once more.

Those are words that will never be enough.