‘It is a strange thing to have people on the margins of society, not fully integrated, and doing the invisible work’

South African novelist of The Cleaner talks about how feeling ‘on the outside’ helped inspire her Galway-set thriller Mary Watson had a culture shock when she first moved to Ireland (Photo: Frank McGrath) “I was 10 years old in 1985, when a state of emergency was declared in South Africa and it got very heated up and scary, with tanks patrolling the streets and that kind of thing. I wonder sometimes how much damage that caused me,” says Cape Town-born writer Mary Watson, “because I’m quite an anxious person now.” The theme of how different choices or circumstances can change a life is one that occupies Watson’s imagination.

It’s a fascination that probably motivated her to become a writer and it certainly informs her novel, The Cleaner , a psychological revenge thriller set in a salubrious Irish housing development and told from the perspective of the woman who cleans for the residents..