On Grand National Day at Aintree this Saturday, the Rose Paterson Trust will be launched. This time last year, Rose was the chairman of Aintree, and had to cancel the meeting because of Covid. In June, she took her own life. The purpose of the trust is to help prevent such events. Owen, her widower, is very frank. He believes that: ‘If Rose had been aware of the utter catastrophe she has wrought — the first victim being herself — she would not have done it.’ The worst is that it cannot be undone. It is a wound that time can do frighteningly little to heal. He says it is wrong to think of suicide only as something committed by obviously lonely and depressed people. The urge can come upon people like Rose — beautiful, loved, admired, fulfilled in work, friendship and family, yet prey to terrible anxiety. This can act like ‘a heart attack to the brain’, and suicide, especially when encouraged by sinister how-to websites, can present itself as the answer. He and his family ask themselves every day how they could have failed to notice her deep worry, and how she, always so kind and concerned for others, did not imagine the pain her death would cause. As one of Rose’s close friends for more than 40 years, I can testify that we were the same. We knew she was a worrier, but we believed completely in her competence to triumph over her worries, as she so often did. We need to understand why we were wrong. Suicide awareness courses can tell you the warning signs — in others, and in yourself. The trust wants to help them, and the small charities which do so much local work in this area. As Owen puts it, every year in Britain, the equivalent of 15 jumbo jets full of people attempt suicide, and more than one in 20 ‘succeeds’. Every death is avoidable if the right help is in the right place at the right time. Donations can be made via rosepatersontrust.com.