About a month later, I was heading to Australia for a literary festival when Lois emailed me about approving a press release. But the attachment was taking too long to open on the bad airport Wi-Fi, so I said I was sure whatever it said was fine and I got on that plane. A day later I landed in Australia and opened my laptop to find dozens of emails – from friends, family, colleagues and some strangers – all eager to hear more about my ‘first play’. Not having written a play – or ever considered writing one – I was understandably a bit perturbed. I phoned my agent, who also congratulated me on my first play, and suggested I take a look at Twitter, which was apparently full of still more people almost as surprised as I was to find I had written a play. I then tried blaming Lois, but indeed in her press release she had said nothing about a play, although perhaps the word ‘monologue’ was, in retrospect, easily misinterpreted. I sat for a while in Sydney Airport and looked deep into the gaping void in myself where a play was meant to be. I went through my options: break own leg, contract short but serious illness, remain in Australia, explain to Twitter it was mistaken, or try to translate a fourteenth-century medieval text written in rhyming couplets into a contemporary piece about Kilburn …

Which is all to say, when I sat down to write The Wife of Willesden I had no idea it would end up being one of the more delightful writing experiences of my life. I think, when we talk about ‘creativity’, not enough is said about the interesting role that limits, rules and restrictions can play. In this case, the rules of the game were almost absurdly constricting: a medieval text – concerning sexual politics that would seem as distant as the moon – constructed in rhyming couplets from lines of ten syllables each. Yet from the moment Alyson opens her mouth –

Experience, though noon auctoritee

Were in this world, were right ynogh to me

To speke of wo that is in marriage