The Exit (19 page)

The two main characters in THE EXIT have a big age gap: Catherine is 23 and Rose is 82. Did you find it easier to capture the voice of someone younger than you, or older, or does the age of the characters not matter in this way when you’re writing fiction?

I deliberately didn’t want to be ageist. I just wanted to think of Catherine and Rose as people, real women, and I hope the authenticity of voice sprang from that. I suppose I did draw on my daughter (17) who, like Catherine, is wondering what she wants to do with her life and taking a lot of selfies; and on Mum (80), who grew up on a dairy farm and loves to write and draw. I’m very close to both of them, and this helped me feel close to Rose and Catherine.

Several of the characters in THE EXIT turn out to have been harbouring major secrets. Do you think most people are hiding something from the world? 

I live in an area lined with red sandstone terraces and I’m always imagining the secrets that might be kept inside the identical houses – (A cross-dresser?  An adulterer?  A domestic abuser? A cocaine addict?)  So yes, I do think everyone has a story, but most people find it impossible to keep a secret to themselves. They have to tell someone. 

As well as writing, you work as a social worker for people on parole. How does this affect your writing?

The essential skills for both jobs are the same: empathy and nosiness.  I don’t think the job affects my writing; it’s just that they’re both suited to me as a person. As a social worker and as a writer I deal with people in crisis. In both jobs I get to know the perpetrator, I gather information, and I assess the risks. In both I hold the belief that ordinary people can do bad things.

THE EXIT is set in a care home and some of the characters are facing the prospect of death. Did writing the book make you think about death and end-of-life care (for example the debate around euthanasia) differently? 

My Dad died a few months before I started writing
The Exit
. I spent two months with him as a brain tumour gradually eroded his faculties. I googled The Brain Hospice Timeline endlessly, wondering what stage he was at, how long he had left. I was with him when a nurse went over his end of life choices (Advanced Care Planning Statement). She asked him bizarre questions that I couldn’t have answered either (‘If you couldn’t walk, would you want to live?’ My Dad said: ‘Well I’d be in a very bad mood’). End of Life care was very much on my mind.  I’ve since watched films like
Amour
, almost obsessed with the euthanasia debate.  But I don’t know what I think, or what I’d want. It’s not till it happens to you, or someone you love, that you realise how complex and profound a question it really is.  

Rose is slipping into dementia, which means that no one believes her when she insists that there is a dark secret at the heart of her care home. How did you do your research on dementia? Was it more disturbing in some ways to write about dementia than something you might find more often in a crime novel, for example murder?

My grandmother died with dementia. I remember visiting her at Nazareth House in Melbourne as a daft eighteen-year-old, feeling nervous and uncomfortable. After a nurse left the room, she said: ‘That woman is trying to kill me!’ I didn’t know what to say, and didn’t say anything; I dismissed it. But what if she was telling the truth?

Before writing this book, I talked to people who’d been affected by dementia. I read a lot of articles and blogs by dementia patients and carers. It’s such a difficult illness, one a third of us will face in later years. Yes, I found it more disturbing than writing about a murder.

In your two most recent novels – THE EXIT and THE CRY – you’ve explored the dark side of social media: rumours, bullying, criminal underworlds . . . How do you feel about Facebook and Twitter? Have you experienced their dark sides?

My husband wrote a film called
The Caller
, and was in Puerto Rico while it was being filmed. A Facebook friend of mine also happened to be a fan of Stephen Moyer (Vampire Bill in
True Blood
) who was the lead in the film. I was chatting to my husband online, and he said Stephen Moyer had told him he was reading my book (
The Donor
) in bed. Minutes later, I was chatting to my friend on Facebook, and I mentioned it. Two hours later, my husband called to say that Stephen Moyer was worried because a blogger had written a story about what he was reading in bed! Oops, my bad.

I love and hate the internet. I love the online crime-writing community, and I need the camaraderie and banter. But I often feel a sick sense of shame when I overshare, and I have had nasty comments and veiled threats from someone in the past. It takes a while to learn the rules: don’t overshare, don’t tweet drunk, and remember it’s public, and it’s permanent.

Catherine has a good relationship with her mother in the novel, but they both hide things from each other. You often tackle taboos in your fiction and I wondered – does your mother read your books? 

Mum is a retired literature teacher, and a wonderful writer.  When I eventually emailed her my first book, terrified about her reaction to the sweary words and sex scenes, I waited nervously for a week before asking her if she’d read it yet. It hadn’t arrived. God or someone had intervened. I sent it again with an email asking her not to read page 1, page 33, page 57–59 (etc. etc.). She called back three hours later having read all of it. She said she wished she hadn’t read the pages listed above, but was otherwise very proud. Since then, she’s been one of the first to read all of my drafts.

You’re married to a screenwriter. What are the differences between writing fiction and writing screenplays? Do you help each other with writing and editing? 

As a novelist, you are the writer, the producer, the director, and the performer. You have to decide on everything, you fill in the blanks.  My husband says he has staff for all that boring stuff! I tried screenwriting before novel-writing, and it was a great training ground for me, but I find writing books much easier. It comes more naturally to me. 

I’m sitting in bed writing the answers to these questions.  An hour ago I was staring at the screen, unable to think of a thing to say. I messaged my husband on Facebook (he was watching TV downstairs) and asked him if he wanted to come up and help me. A minute later he appeared at the door, ‘Yay! A job!’ He helps me with absolutely everything.

Also by Helen FitzGerald

He’s gone.

And telling the truth won’t bring him back . . .

When a baby goes missing on a lonely roadside in Australia, it sets off a police investigation that will become a media sensation and dinner-table talk across the world.

Lies, rumours and guilt snowball, causing the parents, Joanna and Alistair, to slowly turn against each other.

Finally Joanna starts thinking the unthinkable: could the truth be even more terrible than she suspected? And what will it take to make things right?

The Cry
is a dark psychological thriller with a gripping moral dilemma at its heart and characters who will keep you guessing on every page.

Two daughters. One impossible choice.

Just after her sixteenth birthday, Will’s daughter Georgie suffers kidney failure. She needs a transplant but her type is rare. Will, a single dad who’s given up everything to raise his twin daughters, offers to be a donor.

Then his other daughter, Katy, gets sick. She’s just as precious, her kidney type just as rare. Time is critical, and Will has to make a decision.

Should he try to buy a kidney? Should he save just one child – if so, which one? Should he sacrifice himself? Or is there a fourth solution, one so terrible it has never even crossed his mind?

‘Everybody should read everything that Helen FitzGerald has written.  She is dark, clever, highly inventive.’
Lovereading.co.uk
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What happens when your best friend gets what you’ve always wanted?

Krissie and Sarah – best friends for years – have always wanted different things from life. Krissie has no desire to settle down, whereas Sarah married a doctor in her early twenties and is dying to start a family. So when Krissie becomes pregnant after a fling and Sarah can’t seem to conceive, things get a little tense.

Krissie and Sarah decide to go on holiday along with Sarah’s husband in the hope of getting their friendship back on track. But what starts as a much-needed break soon becomes a nightmare of sexual tension, murder and mayhem . . .

‘Outrageous, clever, funny, poignant. Helen FitzGerald really is one to watch.’
Mo Hayder

A naïve parole officer in her first month on the job. An extremely good-looking convicted murderer. What could go wrong?

These are some of Krissie’s tips for fellow parole officers:

Don’t smuggle heroin into prison.

Don’t drink vodka to relieve stress.

Don’t French-kiss a colleague to make your boyfriend jealous.

If only she’d taken her own advice . . .

When she starts the job, Krissie is happy and in love. Then she meets convicted murderer Jeremy, and begins to believe he may be innocent. Her growing obsession with his case threatens to jeopardise everything – her job, her relationship and her life.