So, as the play continues, the set plays a series of tricks. A door that had opened into a cupboard suddenly leads into a corridor and later into a bathroom. The view out of the window is gradually blocked as a wall rises up, brick by brick. The pictures on the walls change subject. The curtains change colour and the furniture is secretly replaced. Originally, the play was called Metanoia, a word used in psychology to describe the abandonment of the false self … but this was quickly jettisoned by Maureen. ‘Why should I pay to see it when I don’t even know what it means?’

Mindgame opened in Colchester and did surprisingly well. It got some good reviews in the local press and the audiences loved it. I can say this with confidence because I watched several performances in the first week and got into the habit of slipping into the bar in the interval to hear what people were saying. The first act ends on a knife-edge. Easterman has escaped and assumed the identity of Dr Farquhar. He has murdered Nurse Plimpton. Holding a scalpel, he advances on Mark Styler, who is helpless, strapped into a straitjacket. There seems to be no possible escape. Curtain. And it worked. I listened to people chatting and they really were engaged, wondering what was going to happen next. There were no walkouts.

For the next five months, from November through to March, the play faded into the background as it continued its tour and I got on with my other work. It was easy to forget that it was happening at all unless Ahmet happened to ring me – which he did occasionally when there were good reviews or when things went wrong. The big news, though, came at the end of February. After going through the box-office receipts with his accountant, he had decided to open in the West End and somehow he had managed to raise the money for an initial twelve-week run at the Vaudeville, a handsome nineteenth-century theatre in the Strand, not far from Trafalgar Square. There would only be three weeks’ rehearsal. One of the actors had decided to drop out. But Ewan Lloyd was still on board as director. We would open in the second week of April.

Before I knew it, we were rehearsing in a converted warehouse in Dalston and this time I was allowed to join in. The rehearsal room was exactly what I would have imagined: a large, empty space with a triple-height ceiling and flaking walls, a kitchen area with an assortment of mugs, a kettle, tea and biscuits. Four plastic chairs were arranged in a circle for the director and cast and made me think of an AA meeting. The shape of the set had been chalked out on the bare floorboards, with traffic cones used for the doors and windows. The various props had been arranged on trestle tables. Styler’s straitjacket hung on a rail. There were more chairs at the edge of the room for the assistant director, the lighting designer, the costume assistant and various other backstage staff. The atmosphere was always highly charged … intense.