The idea for my novel came in a rush: as I walked over the Thames on the Golden Jubilee Bridge in central London, the scene at the heart of it leapt out of the deep blue dusk and clung on to me until I committed to writing it into existence.
A few months later, it became depressingly clear that the half-hour snatches of writing at the end of my working day just weren’t going to get me over the finish line.
