I remembered the effect that scene had on me. I’d had a sheltered childhood, had never experienced that kind of cruelty. But the writing must have been vivid enough for me to believe that the world contained people like that man. I learned something about life, even though it was nothing more than made-up words on a page, and it stayed in my memory for all those years. I didn’t go back and read it now, but used my memory of it—whether accurate or not—as the trigger to free-associate about Sal:

She was a soft-hearted little thing: had set upon a big hulk of a man whose horse had buckled at the knees but who went on labouring at him with a stick to make him rise. Stop, leave off! she had shrilled, and beat her small fists on his great back. Leave off! and the man had shrugged her off like a kitten and would have turned the stick on her, except that Thornhill pulled her away.

Thank you, Anna Sewell.

Michael didn’t know about Sophia, still patiently waiting in the ‘Good Bits To Use Later’ folder. But standing in the space offered to me by the idea of ‘darkening’ Sal, I realised that I could adapt some of that material. Sophia had been an attractive character (hence painful to lose) because the sweetness of her nature always had a darker side. She had known the deaths of many brothers and sisters. Had nearly died from smallpox and was scarred by it. Understood something of fear and grief.

It felt as though Sophia was always meant to be the London Sal, but I hadn’t realised that until now. My pleasure in the complicated revenge plot, and my disappointment at it not working, had prevented me from understanding her real place in the book. Being invited to think about Sal afresh allowed me to see the way I’d tried to force the story into the shape I thought it should have. I’d got in its way.

Now I could make use of what earlier readers had said. One of them had pointed to a specific scene where I might ‘beef up’ Sal’s character—an episode in which Sal’s mother and father die and she and Thornhill are plunged into poverty. I planned to add a couple of paragraphs. Six pages later, it was starting to look as though this new, darker Sal was at least as strong as her husband. She might have even been stronger. Much more likely to become that fierce person in Australia.

But Michael had said something else to say about that Australian Sal. He had gone cautiously, in case I got sensitive about being criticised. He put it like this: ‘Once Sal gets the glooms, there’s nowhere for her to go.’