Exile, appropriately, was written while I lived away from my home-city, Belfast.
I had been living in London at the time, working in various industries that weren't quite right for me. I would traipse to work, squeezing onto the tube, depressed at how my life was turning out. Clocking in, clocking out. Lunch meetings. One to ones about plans that neither I nor my manager really believed would come to fruition.
There was little of this period of time that brought me much joy: I was badly paid, overworked. But I was contented, as my mind was elsewhere, working over a story in my head that I didn’t yet know would become a novel.
Every night after dinner, I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote.
Exile’s main character Fiadh came to haunt me during this time, appearing fully fleshed in my mind as if she were an imaginary friend. I could see her, an 18-year-old living away from home for the first time in a new city, Liverpool. She longed for Belfast, for the closeness of family and friends, but when she returns home, she is attacked by a childhood friend. This assault forever ruptures her ties to home.
Set in 2008, the novel is takes place in a climate of normalised misogyny, which denied survivors of sexual violence the justice they deserve. There are, in many ways, echoes with our current times, in which sexual assault convictions are not only not guaranteed but unlikely.
Every night after dinner, I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote. I had to write Fiadh’s scenes that were appearing so vividly in my head. They had to go into a word document, even if, at that time, I didn’t believe I would ever show a soul.
But as the word count spiralled up to the tens of thousands, it came to take its shape. Something had to be done. I had to send it out, hopeful that it would find the readers who needed it.
Exile is published by John Murray Press
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