Shoe factory + toxic fumes + creepy factory managers + highbrow literary novelist = potboiler novel. I find what’s implied here rather problematic, but totally sympathise with her.

She said that she fled to Oxford because she feared that the council bore a grudge against her and could make life difficult for her if she stayed. “The thing that was insane is that the environmental health guy stood with me smelling this stuff and saying he couldn’t smell it,” she said. “It was a bizarre situation.”

The council’s environmental health department said first that it was unable to test for the chemicals. When it did conduct a test, the equipment registered a reading so high it was off the scale. The council paid her £4,000 later, after an investigation by the Local Government Ombudsman found it guilty of maladministration.

Ms Brady, who was the first woman to win the Whitbread Book of the Year award, said that the numbness in her legs was so severe that she could stick a needle in her shin and not feel it. “I still have a slight impairment in the left hand. It’s like when you’ve been to the dentist and the anaesthetic is beginning to wear off.”

Doctors from the medical toxicology unit of Guy’s Hospital in London confirmed that she had neuropathy, or nerve damage, that was likely to have been caused by chemicals.