With Leslie’s company taking over the option, however, all of that was to change. Being a writer herself, Leslie understood my anxieties and has made it almost a point of principle ever since to keep me informed and up to speed on what’s been happening. Consequently, over the next seven years we would exchange upwards of a thousand emails. Often, like a crack addict, I would bug her the way I had previously bugged my agent. “Any news? Any news? Come on, man, there must be something, a taste, anything.” And to her eternal credit, she always had something, always kept me supplied. It can’t have been easy for her. I was in Dublin, writing another novel and changing nappies, and she was over in Hollywood doing all of the heavy lifting, taking the meetings, negotiating deal points over this or that, schmoozing the moneymen and the studio alpha dogs. Her perseverance and dedication to the project have been epic and without her the film simply would not have come together. But come together it did. After many false starts. And various names at various times being “attached” (it’s hard not to use air quotes when talking about this stuff), names such as Cusack, Wahlberg, Sturgess and Ledger. After each of these peaks, there’d be a trough, hence the excitement fatigue.

Then suddenly, Shia LaBeouf was “attached” and everything seemed to fall into place. He “signed”. Neil Burger was to direct. Universal Studios were providing the moolah. Hooray for Hollywood, that screwy, ballyhooey.

Then I spotted a news item online one morning, Shia LaBeouf, to whom I had become quite “attached”, had had a minor traffic accident and hurt his hand. I smiled, almost indulgently. Someone oughta rein this kid in, I thought, little knowing that this peak would be followed by a year-long trough, and near despair all round. Then Bradley Cooper signed on, and it all fell into place again. Neil directing: Relativity Media, Abbie Cornish, Anna Friel. Shooting in New York. And almost as an afterthought, in an email like so many others, mention was made of Robert De Niro maybe being “interested” in the part of Carl Van Loon. But don’t get excited, I was warned. And I actually didn’t. Then De Niro “signed”. When I was fourteen, I went on my own one day to see Mean Streets. I had to scam my way in because it was rated ‘over 18s’. But that little act of transgression was nothing compared to what I soon found myself gaping at on the screen, De Niro’s performance as Johnny Boy, the most dangerous thing I had ever seen, and have possibly ever seen. Now, thirty-six years later, here was De Niro. That was a high point, obviously. And the De Niro effect was phenomenal. It was like a massive adrenaline shot to the heart. Everybody I knew was “excited” about the movie anyway, but when you mentioned De Niro, the air quotes fell away and jaws dropped to the floor. The other high point for me, and a good bookend, came when I visited the set in New York last April. There’s a scene in the novel where the main character finds himself one morning staggering in an MDT-fuelled haze across Brooklyn Bridge. I remember writing the scene very clearly, because I was drawing on my own experience, ten years earlier, of having to stagger (in a very different kind of haze) across the bridge every morning to work. But now, in 2010, here I was one glorious Tuesday, at 6 a.m., watching a busy film crew, watching a director and a movie star, meticulously recreating that scene. For a writer who spends most of his time alone in a small room, that was a pretty amazing experience.

And then, all at what felt like a rush, the film was made and in the can. The post-production phase has been quite long, my only brush with it coming when the marketing folks decided to change the title from The Dark Fields to Limitless. I didn’t have any say in the matter, but threw a hissy fit anyway. The original title, which comes from the last page of The Great Gatsby, speaks to certain themes in the book, and Limitless could have meant anything. But in that way names have of accruing associations and energies around them, Limitless took hold and has grown on me. I haven’t seen the film yet. I know it has morphed quite a bit from the original script, and that there has been considerable “input” from the studio (which is inevitable, apparently, when budgets hit a certain level), but if the trailer is anything to go by – the look and feel of it, the pacing, the narrative setup – then they’ve certainly done a terrific job of remaining true to the spirit of the book. Over the last ten years then, Dubya has come and gone, my hard drive has increased from two gigabytes to two terabytes, I’ve written three novels and had two kids. They’re now making fart jokes and taking guitar lessons. So, you know what? It is a long time. But such is the nature and draw of the movie business that if any of my other novels were to be optioned in the morning, I’d be onboard like a shot, doubtless succumbing once again to the naïve delusion that it could all be done, this time, in eighteen months.