The elder of the two middle-aged sisters stirred in the cramped brass bed then stuck her left foot out from under the flowered eiderdown with a groan. She awoke with a loud complaint about the state of spinsterhood in Victorian England, as was her daily routine.

Set in nineteenth century Corbridge decades before improved rail and road links transformed the village into a dormitory town for Newcastle, the dramatisation of my best-selling gothic novel was sure to be a huge cinematic hit. The accompanying fame would release me from the tedium of applying for school teaching roles for which I was unqualified, cleaning toilets left in a dreadful state by autistic mathematical geniuses, and listening to KA drone on about the marvel of fuel efficiency that was her new washing machine.