3. It’s a plague – who lives, who dies? The hat of death.

When you’ve brought onto the page a set of characters that you’ve got used to, grown fond of (some of them), who you’ve seen develop and display their particular quirks and foibles, it is difficult to decide who will die of the plague. Yet a devastating plague demands some deaths. But who? And how do you make that choice?

I wrote letters of the alphabet representing different people on slips of paper, placed them in an old hat – the hat of death – shook it well, then blindly dipped in my hand to find out who had won, or rather lost, the raffle.