Sally helped so many. How tragic she couldn’t help herself
A highly personal tribute to our columnist Sally Brampton, who died last week, by her close friend, novelist KATHRYN FLETT
Dearest Majesty, So EXCITED about your novel. When can I see you? And the house? More you, actually — Loving thoughts, Duch xxxxxxx
That’s the last email my friend sally Brampton sent to me and I still can’t believe I’ll never get another, because sally took her own life, on her own terms, early last tuesday morning — while the rest of us were asleep and she yearned to be.
I moved house not long ago — just another half-mile further along from sally’s place on the East sussex coast in st Leonards-on-sea — but, nonetheless, she hadn’t been here yet.
I was desperate to show her my new garden; she is — damn, was — enviably green-fingered and I knew she’d love it. she’d missed my book launch in april, sending me a text to explain why: that damn ‘black dog’ of depression was snapping at her heels again.
sally had suffered from severe depression for over two decades. she was very open about it, turning her suffering into a memoir, shoot the Damn Dog — a characteristically unflinching look at the illness from her own eloquent perspective.
as a result, friends always knew our best-laid plans could be cancelled at short notice whenever the black dog barked. this meant that when you did get her to yourself you made the most of her.
I kick myself for not going to a mutual friend’s birthday. My partner went. ‘I had a lovely chat with sally,’ he said. ‘she seemed on good form and is looking forward to seeing our garden.’ Four days later she was gone.
We always wrote our emails to each other using titles — ‘Your Grace’, ‘Your Royal highness’, ‘Majesty’, ‘Princess’, ‘Ladyship’, ‘Duchess’. It was an in-joke about our alleged ‘status’ as grandes
dames of magazines, but I never told sally (plain ‘sall’ to her friends) that, secretly, I was deeply flattered she treated me as one of her peers.
as far as I was concerned, she was a real editor’s editor; someone I’d looked up to and aspired to become.
We first met on the front row of Paris Fashion Week in the late Eighties — I was fashion editor of cool style bible the Face and sally was editor of the glossy new French import, Elle.
she was eight years my senior and immeasurably glamorous — a proper journalist. she claims the depression already had her in its grip at Elle, though I was too young and naive ever to have seen it; from my youthful perspective, sally’s life was glittering.
sally (not yet ‘sall’ to me) was always lovely when our paths crossed at shows and fashion industry parties, but our lives were frenetically busy; not necessarily conducive to forging lasting bonds of friendship.
that came in the late Nineties. One midweek afternoon, just after my brief marriage collapsed, I was shuffling down to my local corner shop in West London when I spotted sally, apparently also on a deadline surfer’s cigarette run.
HER freelance writer’s get-up (she had left Elle in 1990) was far more chic than mine — a Breton t-shirt with genuine smartcasual ‘What? this old thing?’ style.
I knew sally had married (Jonathan Powell, the former Controller of BBC1; what a glamorous London media couple they made) and had a young daughter, Molly (now 24).
however, as we caught up on our shared street corner, it seemed sally’s life was nowhere near as perfect as I’d assumed.
she hinted her marriage was failing and told me about her struggle with depression (‘sally Brampton had depression? how could that even be?’ I remember thinking), about how tough and debilitating it was. I was astounded by her warmth, her candour and eloquence — her friendship-trademarks as it turned out. Meanwhile, I told sally I was writing a memoir about my embarrassingly brief failed marriage. she was enthused, supportive.
she hugged me in a fug of Marlboro, said she loved my columns and, of course, I blushed, and bathed in the glow of her compliments. I think we smoked and talked and smoked some more on that street corner for about 40 minutes all in and from that moment on, sally was ‘sall’.
Within weeks, I’d finished my book, been dumped by the man I’d rebounded into a relationship with. Oh, and also had a total breakdown and checked into a private psychiatric unit. hello, clinical depression! It was a not-so-warm welcome to sally’s world.
Unlike sally, I got better — eventually. My book was published and as we kept in intermittent contact and had many mutual friends, I knew that she was battling her own demons — depression, anaesthetised unsuccessfully with drink. We stayed in touch and said kind things to each other, always.
a few years later, sally, remarried herself with a newspaper agony aunt column, told me she was writing a memoir about depression. I couldn’t think of anyone better equipped to tackle the subject. I was a single mum, living by the seaside with a five-year-old and a toddler. While fending off a recurrence of my depression, I fell on sally’s beautiful, brave words.
and then I received an email from sally out of the blue, in late 2009, telling me her daughter Molly was off to Oxford.
Because her nest was empty, she was thinking of moving down to st Leonards. I told her she’d be ‘right at home here, among all the old nutters at the seaside’. and she was, she really was. and how lucky we were to have her. how blessed. I wish I’d had more opportunities to drink a spontaneous glass of sauvignon on her roof terrace, from where you could watch the sun set over her flowers and, in the distance, over Beachy head.
she was such a generous hostess, so welcoming.
I loved our giggly, girly, occasionally scurrilous lunches at her pretty Georgian townhouse. I was greedy for her news and her advice; her wisdom.
I’d feel a bit guilty for off-loading my problems knowing how much she suffered with her own — she was always so upfront about good days v bad days, always honest about her feelings. Friends knew some days were so unbearable she needed to disappear; you only ever saw sally when she felt safe enough to be seen.
she was not just an agony aunt for her readers at the sunday times, in Psychologies magazine and, most recently, advising readers about sex and relationships in this the Daily Mail’s Inspire section — she was wonderfully insightful on behalf of all her friends; the smart yet vulnerable, warm yet ‘cool’, older, wiser ‘agony sister’ this only child had always dreamed of.
SALLY made a failed attempt to take her own life two years ago, after which in an exchange of morbidly witty emails, I ticked her off.
‘sorry, Duch — you’re stuck with us. stay on this journey, we need you along for the ride…’. We batted dark jokes back and forth, and then a few weeks later, came this:
Morning, Most Graciousness. Feeling a bit better, but approaching with caution. Remember those hideous aches and pains and exhaustion that feels like flu because one’s head has gone bonkers and starts instructing the body to feel what it shouldn’t? Anyway, gradually fading and mood swings less vicious.
Last week I was smashing bottles of wine in the sink in order to inflict fatal injuries. This week, I’m just drinking them.
All digits crossed. Still have the mental health crisis team dropping in at all times to make sure I’m sentient, but managed to drop out of ‘daycare’ because everything they were teaching about depression was a bit basic. They encouraged me to leave on account of them boring me silly. The cheek.
So, more myself and kicking the s*** out of the black dog. Date anytime soon? My most magnificent love, HRH xxxxxxxxxx
Eventually, inevitably, the Black Dog’s bark became as bad as its bite and last tuesday morning, May 10, she left her house, walked the few hundred metres down the hill to the sea and kept going.
and now she’s gone, but she’s also free. and though I’m happy — for her — that she’s no longer suffering, she leaves us missing her.
I shall personally miss sally’s habitual greeting of ‘Darling!’ accompanied by a warm, enveloping, cigarette-scented hug, instantly making you feel, magically, as though you were the only person in the whole world she really wanted to see.
all of her friends, greedily and selfishly, wanted more of those hugs.
Funny, clever, self-deprecating, warm, witty and wise — what was there not to love about sally Brampton?
Even as she has taken herself away from us, she has left us many fond memories — and all of her wonderful words.
sleep tight, Duchess.
IF YOU or anyone you know needs help, contact The Samaritans on 116123 or go to samaritans.org.