In memory of my sister

When Richard Mason was ten, his life was shattered by the suicide of his older sister, Kay.

Here he describes how his emotions were in turmoil for years and how he eventually found an outlet for his grief in his novels, and in a charity in her name in their native South Africa

It was a hot day, I remember that: the first after a cold, dry winter. I was diving for pebbles thrown by my father in the small swimming pool in the garden of our house in Johannesburg. I knew that a state of emergency had recently been declared in South Africa, indemnifying the security forces from prosecution for 'unlawful acts committed in good faith', but I didn't suspect that a state of emergency was developing in my own family.

All I was conscious of was the approaching end of the school holidays, and the fact that my sister Kay, then aged 20, had come home early from her final year at university.

Reaching for a pebble, I discovered instead a small shard of green china at the bottom of the pool and returned to the surface with it. It seemed an unlikely discovery. Swimming to the edge, I waved it at my father and asked how it had got there and sensed immediately that I had found something I shouldn't have. He leant down and took it gently from me, saying quietly that he had no idea what it was; but I knew from the way his eyes avoided mine that this was not the whole truth.

My father only told me the story years later: how Kay, lost in one of the moods that so terrified her, had thrown a complete dinner service from the first-floor balcony of the house, in full view of a lunch party of guests sitting on the lawn. I had not been present and the incident had been hidden from me, the shard of china the only evidence of the drama.

One of the characters in my new novel, Us, remarks that he's often noticed 'the morbid curiosity of even the nicest people. Very few, when told of another's death, can resist enquiring almost immediately after its manner, though there may be a briefly murmured line of sympathy before the inevitable question.' My answer to the inevitable question, put to me countlessly in the 16 years since Kay died, is that she committed suicide.

It's a response that takes people aback and only the bravest proceed to that unanswerable interrogative, 'Why?' Until her first bipolar episode, in her early twenties, there was no sign that my sister's life was proceeding towards tragedy. We are a family of four brothers and sisters: Jenny is two years older than Kay, William is two years younger.

I'm the baby of the group: 11 years separate me from William. Kay was an exceptional person: quick-witted, charismatic, a social leader with a gift for friendship. Though the years since she died have inevitably rubbed away some of her flaws she was too mischievous to be a saint her achievements stand by themselves, melancholy suggestions of what might have been.

She came third in the country in her matric exams (South Africa's equivalent of A level). She won the class medal in her last year at university, despite being too ill to attend any lectures. When she died, the garage was full of boxes overflowing with sporting awards, music certificates, photographs of Kay at the centre of large, laughing groups. It is illustrative of who she was that, in the midst of debilitating depression, she was able to talk her way into a degree without sitting a single one of her final exams.

I was six when she came home early from university for the first time, wildeyed. Civil unrest all over the country was being kept, as far as possible, from the affluent residents of lush white-only neighbourhoods to whom the only evidence of the violence was the occasional no-show of a housekeeper or nanny, detained in the townships by striking transport workers.

Alone of the families on our tree-lined street, we knew what was happening.

My mother had been a prominent dissident since her university days, helping to organise the election campaigns of the only antiapartheid Member of Parliament, Helen Suzman, and her children had naturally followed suit. As the baby of the family (the 'old-age mistake') I had grown up on my older siblings' stories of student protest and knew all about their narrow escapes from the secret police whose methods, however brutal, remained legal so long as they acted 'in good faith'. My parents thought, at first, that Kay's political activities had landed her in trouble. That was the only explanation they could find for the terror that had settled over their confident, energetic daughter. The doctors said that Kay was overworked, that she needed rest, and to my great delight they suggested she stay at home for a few weeks, taking things 'easy'.

Kay and I spent those weeks with each other, mainly in the summerhouse at the end of the garden. Aged seven, I was making a castle from blocks of wood for a school project. She spent her time painting swirling dreamscapes, reminiscent of Kandinsky, and talking about the political situation. She was worried about South Africa, convinced that the apartheid government would let Nelson Mandela die in jail. She was particularly concerned about the children whom the security forces were arresting in evergreater numbers. What would happen to their education? Who would look after them?

We worked quietly together in the sunshine, listening to Billy Joel on a scratchy tape player and setting the world to rights.

She used to say that she was glad she'd been ill, or we'd never have spent such happy times together.

Kay battled against bipolar disorder for four years, experiencing drastic oscillations in mood between mania (a state characterised by high energy and racing ideas) and severe depression. I am frequently asked whether I am 'resentful' of my sister's decision to end her own life, to which the only answer is that consciousness in all its wonder and pain is something that each individual has the right to accept or reject. What saddens me is that no one could have predicted, in the early Eighties, how psychiatric medicine would advance over the coming decade; and so the hope available to so many who are 'touched by fire' today, as the title of the brilliant psychiatrist Dr Kay Jamison's book describes the condition, was not within Kay's grasp.

Iwas ten years old when she died and sitting in a geography class in a day school in London. My parents had grown tired of political battles and emigrated to England a few months earlier. A discussion of glacial formation was halted by the school secretary, who knocked on the door and said she had a message to pass on. I knew, perhaps from her unintentional glance in my direction, that the message was for me; and when she said, with a significant nod of her head, that my father was coming to collect me, I thought at once that something had happened to my mother.

Waiting in the secretary's office, under her unblinking gaze, I concentrated my energies on the juddering second hand of a deafening clock.

When the school door opened, I went out on to the staircase and saw my mum climbing the stairs so my first tears were of tremendous relief. As I clung to her, sobbing, she told me quietly what had happened.

For 16 years since that day, I haven't been able to cry. I think the endless sympathetic glances made me self-conscious; and the fact that people even family friends I didn't know spent the next six months hugging me tightly at every available opportunity only inhibited me more.

The subtle connection between laughter and tears was reversed for me by Kay's death, and throughout my adolescence I found to my horror that in situations that demanded public grief, all I could do was laugh.

It is to my best friend's great credit that we continue to be friends even though, at the age of 14, my only response to his grandfather's death was hysterical giggling. Not everyone has been so forgiving. When another friend's father told me tearfully about the death of the family dog, my unstoppable laughter ensured I was never invited back. It took a great effort of will, over many years, to control myself during announcements of bad news.

I think Kay's death alerted me to the power, and the danger, of the human mind, and woke in me a fascination with its workings. When I wrote my first book, The Drowning People, I didn't consciously set out to write about her; but the novel, as it unfolded, came to be about a suicide that overshadows a family for three generations. My new novel, Us, centres on what happens to a group of people when it loses its most charismatic member and although Maggie Ogilvie is no portrait of Kay Mason, they laugh in the same way.

I was 20 when The Drowning People was published and my previous jobs had been minimumwage efforts selling sweaters in London department stores or typing other people's letters.

Having disposable cash was a novel experience.

It seemed important to do something useful with my good fortune, so I decided to give four scholarships, in Kay's name, to the children she had worried about so much when she was alive.

Five years on, under the patronage of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Kay Mason Foundation is helping 30 kids to receive the education they deserve and I have learnt to cry again. Being involved with these children, watching them grow and evolve and learn to tap into their own potential, has been one of the most releasing experiences of my life. It has shown me that grief, in all its deadening heaviness, needn't be a static emotion; that generosity can transform it into joy.

I am grateful to Kay for teaching me that truth, and delighted that her name for so many years spoken in hushed tones of sorrow has a new currency now, and rings with hope for so many.

Richard Mason's latest novel, Us, is published by Viking at Pounds 12.99

The Kay Mason Foundation

One of the only beneficial legacies of apartheid is a tier of excellent, formerly white-only schools in South Africa. These schools are now open to all, but their fees effectively exclude those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Kay Mason Foundation is dedicated to preserving standards at these schools and to widening access to them but we don't think in terms of charity or handouts. The parents of KMF scholars contribute to the cost of their children's education and work in partnership with the foundation, ensuring that each KMF scholar receives maximum support both at home and at school. Older KMF scholars mentor younger ones and the foundation has a fulltime staff providing pastoral care and academic support to each of our scholars, on an individual basis.

Royalties from my novels cover the foundation's operating costs, which means that 100 per cent of donated money is spent on the kids. As Desmond Tutu says: 'Individuals can change the world.' It lies within your power to change a child's life today.

To find out more, please visit www.kaymasonfoundation.org. If you click on a child's face on the scholars' page, you'll be able to read all about them in their own words. Donations can be made online or sent to the Kay Mason Foundation, 34 Milner Street, London SW3 2QF.

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