Williams had seen the show six times before returning to Melbourne for Wednesday’s opening performance. She was intrigued to see it again as there have been two major cast changes. Esme is now played by Brenna Harding, and Carlos Sanson jnr takes on the role of Gareth. In the original production these parts had been played by Tilda Cobham-Hervey and Raj Labade.

On Wednesday, the State Theatre Company South Australia and Sydney Theatre Company production (directed by Jessica Arthur and with a striking design by Jonathon Oxlade), received an enthusiastic reception.

Laughton sent Williams some drafts of the script. “I decided I didn’t need to provide any creative input. My reading was for historical accuracy because I had done a lot of research for the book.” Arthur described Williams after the performance as a “research nerd”.

As a long-time theatregoer, Williams found it illuminating to go to rehearsals, to see the creation of a different art form. “I particularly love the staging of plays. I never walk out thinking ‘that was a waste of time’. Even if I don’t gel with it, I’ve usually been engaged enough in the staging of it. So I was really fascinated to see how a play was put together.”

As Williams recalled visiting the SA theatre company’s rehearsal space, it was clear she was still moved by what had been an enlightening experience. She said she felt humbled in the face of something so much bigger than her.

“I had no idea how much passion and energy – and money, to be honest – was going into this. The sets, all those actors, all these things being made from scratch, the investment from so many people in time and money and passion and energy completely shut me up. I’m talking a lot right now, but I was speechless.”

On opening night in Adelaide she was terrified – for the cast and crew. “I had seen how much of themselves they put into it. And I felt like a good friend or sister or mother might feel when someone you know is doing their thing for the first time, and you want it to work.”

Writing is a solitary act. Yes, Williams gets letters – lots – from readers, but those are lines composed in tranquillity. Hearing lines she remembered writing spoken by the actors and then the immediate response of the audience near her was “unique and amazing”.

The Dictionary has had something of a charmed life, which never ceases to amaze Williams. The novel was published on March 31 just days after Australia had slipped into the grip of the pandemic, and she thought the book would quietly disappear. No chance. “My partner Shannon and I sometimes sit back and go, what the f---?”

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But she is also well aware that plenty of wonderful books were published early in 2020.

“It doesn’t necessarily make any sense that my book went bonkers. I’m not being falsely modest, I just know that to be the truth. There was a whole basket of books that were good. For whatever reason, mine did well ... It might have been that this book was about a historical moment that we could all focus on at a time we didn’t want to focus on the life we were living.”

Since then, she has written a companion novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, there is a TV adaptation of Dictionary in the pipeline – all she can say is that it’s in production and will be a six or eight-part series – and the composer Marian Budos has written a concerto for harp and orchestra, Esme’s Words, in which the harp represents Esme.

Williams has always written. Despite being dyslexic, it’s the way she preferred to express herself. We have spoken about it in the past, but I wondered whether there had been benefits from her dyslexia. “The answer is yes,” she stressed. “I wouldn’t give back the dyslexia if I could.”

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Knowledge about it and other neurodiverse conditions is increasing all the time, she says, and research shows that people with dyslexia have particular problem-solving skills and strategic-thinking skills. As a research academic, her job was to see patterns in things; as a strategic planner, her job was to see relationships between things in an organisation. “As a writer, what happens is once I’m into a story, I feel it happening almost every day. I just start to see connections between different parts of the story that seem to work.

“I’m lucky that my dyslexia isn’t so severe that I couldn’t learn to read. And to be honest, probably most children who are dyslexic and haven’t learned to read have not had the right teacher. There’s no reason not to be able to read if you’re dyslexic. It’s just the wrong approach.”

Her next bit of writing is another novel. She won’t talk much about it other than to say one of the characters will be familiar to readers of her previous books. “But I definitely wouldn’t call it a third in a series.”

Her earliest bits of writing were Puberty Blues fan fiction. Her first published work was a poem written when she was 15. It was called Fifteen, appeared in Dolly, and was about ... being 15.

She still has a copy and blushes when asked to recite the first few lines. Sportingly, she does: “Fifteen is an age of just in between/ no immature habits should ever be seen./ No alcohol served at your table at night. Don’t act like a child, you’re in people’s sight/ Act like an adult or go to your room etc etc ...”

Far from disappearing, however, the poem was brought into the spotlight at last year’s Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival by her on-stage interviewer. Then at question time, the actor Heather Mitchell stood up and asked what year the poem had been published? Then she said – to Williams’ amazement – I have the editor of Dolly’s Poets Corner here with me.

“It was Lisa Wilkinson, who went on to be editor of the magazine, but she was doing poetry corner then and must have chosen the poem. It was wild. Such a lovely moment.”

The Dictionary of Lost Words is at the Arts Centre until March 17.