By now I had completely lost track of the characters in this Victorian melodrama. I was mixing up the real lives of the actors with those of the people that they portrayed. As Charles Dickens’ wife you’d think that I’d be kept informed of the developing story, but I was not. When I walked in on two weeping women struggling to button up their white cotton bodices after what looked suspiciously like a sex scene, I resolved to question my husband over the ridiculous complexities of the plot.

It then crossed my mind how impractical it was to conduct an illicit affair in the nineteenth century. So much time with your lover was wasted undoing, then doing up, all the stays and corsets.