Alumna, former police officer and Sunday Times bestselling author, Clare Mackintosh, read French and Management Studies from 1994–99. She talks to alumna and journalist, Jessica Jonzen, about how a careers evening at Royal Holloway set her on her path.
It’s often the seemingly insignificant decisions that we make which can have the greatest impact on our lives. If novelist Clare Mackintosh had decided to go to a different careers talk at Royal Holloway one evening in 1999, her life might have taken a very different course.
"It was a term when all sorts of employers were coming in to talk to us and I’d actually planned to go and listen to a talk on being a management consultant, which a lot of my peers were doing. I don’t know why, but I went to the police talk instead" she says.
"I was absolutely captivated; it was specifically about joining the fast track programme as a graduate. They talked about how tough it was to get in, which sparked a bit of my competitive nature, and it clearly was a very high-octane job but you needed to be switched on. It pressed all my buttons so I applied."
Despite showing a flair for writing at school, Clare had never considered that it would be a viable career option for her. "I wanted to write when I was a teenager; it just didn’t feel like a career choice that was open to me", she says. "I didn’t know anyone who worked in the Arts or media and I think that role models are so important. So, although it wasn’t closed off to me, it certainly didn’t feel like an open avenue."
The selection process for the Accelerated Promotion Scheme for Graduates was gruelling with extended interviews, presentations to boards, debates and observation. "I really thrived on it" Clare says. "The year I joined there were 3000 applicants and they only took 12." Clare joined Thames Valley Police and went on to enjoy a 12-year career, rising to Inspector before leaving in 2011.
Today, her life couldn’t be more different. Her dazzling 2014 debut I Let You Go has sold more than a million copies worldwide. It was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club – regarded by the book industry as a guarantee of commercial success – and won the prestigious Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2016. Clare’s second novel, I See You, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller and was also selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club. Both novels were voted readers’ favourite, and together they have been translated into over 35 languages. Clare’s third novel, Let Me Lie, was also a number one Sunday Times bestseller.
How did she make the leap from police officer to bestselling novelist? "It was less about wanting to leave the police and become a writer and more about needing to do something to keep my family together" she says, with trademark candour. Whilst stationed in the Cotswold town of Chipping Norton in 2006, Clare and her husband, Rob, had had twin boys, Josh and Alex, via IVF. They were born prematurely and three weeks later, Alex contracted meningitis. Two weeks after that, he died.
Amidst the shock and grief, and the sheer exhaustion of caring for a premature baby, seven months later Clare discovered she was pregnant, despite being told that she’d never conceive naturally. Incredibly, it was twins again. Daughters Evie and George were born at 37 weeks and Clare suddenly had to care for three children under 15-months.
She returned to work after maternity leave but life was a difficult balancing act. "Things were really hard working full time. I was working 50 to 60-hour weeks and I felt constantly anxious that I was going to drop something. I rarely saw the children that we’d struggled so much to have and everything felt like it was starting to crumble" she says.
By 2011, Clare was preparing for promotion to Chief Inspector. A 360-degree assessment came back with glowing comments from her peers and bosses. "I showed it to my husband because I was genuinely proud of it and he read it through and it said things like ‘Clare’s always got time for us; she’s always got a smile on her face; her door is always open.' He said 'this is great! Who is this woman?'" It was a turning point. "It was a genuinely shocking moment when I realised that I kept all the best bests of myself for work and gave my family the leftovers and I thought 'this is all wrong.'"
Clare took a two-year career break, "but I had no intention of going back" she admits. "I knew I couldn’t sustain my career at the level that I wanted to have it and I’m not a person who could have gone part time; this was a career that I loved desperately and was incredibly ambitious and driven in. I wanted to be Chief Constable. So, I had to quit; it was all or nothing."
As the larger wage earner, Clare had to continue to bring in money despite being able to stop childcare costs. "The only thing I knew I could do from home was write. I’d started a blog whilst on maternity leave and had carried it on since returning to work. It had been picked up by The Times online and I had been offered a column in Cotswold Life."
Clare reinvented herself as a freelance writer. "I was utterly unapologetic about it and I remember thinking that a lot of that confidence was down to my time at university." She wrote for newspapers and magazines, content for websites and social media and corporate copywriting, "absolutely anything that people would pay me to write and within about six months I had replicated my police earnings."
It was during this first year that Clare started writing her debut novel, I Let You Go. "I found an agent at the end of 2012 and no editors wanted it. We got lots of rejection letters, but then just one editor saw its potential. It still needed some work but this editor was prepared to work with me on it." Clare signed a two-book deal in June 2013, a month before her career break was up. "It felt really amazing to be able to say ‘no, I’m not going to come back because I’m a writer now, I’ve got a book deal.’"
I Let You Go is based on the fall-out of child being killed in a hit-and-run and was inspired by a horrendous case that Clare worked on soon after joining the police force. "I remember that I couldn’t fathom how somebody could drive away from a hit and run, knowing that they had killed a child. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine losing a child as a mother and surviving, I didn’t think it would be possible. And then ten years later, my own son died and of course you realise that you do survive – you have to."
Clare writes movingly and insightfully about grief in both her first book, and in her latest book Let Me Lie. "I think that grief has a profound effect on creativity; grief is another side of love – you only grieve for people that you loved and so it’s probably not surprising that grief inspires art just as much as love does. I couldn’t have been anywhere near the writer that I am now for having had all those experiences, both in the police and in my personal life."
As a crime and thriller writer, Clare’s former life as a police officer lends her work a unique authenticity. "It helps an inordinate amount, although oddly enough it’s less about knowing the ins and outs of procedure and more about the fact that those 12 years were observational gold", she says. "What’s incredible about the police is that it crosses all areas of society – nobody is immune from being touched by crime."
If she wants to describe how one of her characters reacts to an extreme situation, she doesn’t have to imagine how that person might act; she’s witnessed it first-hand. "When you have just been the victim of a crime, or you’ve seen something terrible happen or you’ve just committed an atrocity then you’re at your most raw and vulnerable. Your emotions are very defined and that’s a really interesting thing for a writer to watch and absorb….I feel that, weirdly, it was the perfect training ground for any kind or writer, but certainly very useful for a crime writer."
Clare is also finding that her degree in French and Management Studies is coming into its own, nearly 20 years after graduating. "I’m finding my degree is even more useful now than it was in the police – and it was useful then. Writing is a funny job: it’s almost equally split between the creative side and the business side, and it’s quite comforting to know that I’m not just working from instinct" she says. Her books have sold very well in France and her degree means she is able to do all of her media interviews there in French. "It makes the most enormous difference to how I’m received by readers and how the media respond. I only wish I could do it in every country!"
Clare’s life is almost unrecognisable to how it was when she left the police seven years ago. "My husband quit his job last year, we moved to North Wales and he is at home now looking after the kids and the house so that I can work and I can travel because my schedule is quite hectic now" she says. "I remember so vividly how incredibly frightened I was when I handed in my intention to take a career break. I was sort of grief-stricken that I was walking away from something that I really loved but that wasn’t giving me the home life that I wanted. I was so scared about how it would work out but it has been incredible. Sometimes it feels like someone else’s life."
Did her time at Royal Holloway help her find her path? "I think there is a direct link from those glorious four years of being so happy there to what I do now. It is such an inspiring place and I don’t think I could have done any of this without the self-belief that was subtly, slowly but so crucially imbued in me in those four years" she says. "If I had known when I was 19 and secretly wanted to be a writer that this was where I would end up, I would have said that was the dream, the absolute dream."
