Growing up in a small town in Cornwall in the southwest of England, I was about as far away as you could get from Manhattan island. Like most non-New Yorkers, I fell in love with my favourite city at the movies. When I was small, the Christmas classics lured me in – Miracle on 34th Street, Ghostbusters, Home Alone 2. Later, there was more gritty artistic fare – Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Do the Right Thing. These I would intersperse with rom-coms, musicals and indies – on went Breakfast at Tiffany’s, West Side Story and Frances Ha. If a film was set in New York, I would watch it. TV favourites Friends, Sex and the City and The Sopranos fuelled my addiction until my fantasy version of New York towered over every other city in the world. By the time I finally visited in my 20s, the city had a lot to live up to – and it didn’t disappoint. Fifteen years on, that long weekend remains the greatest city break of my life.

Things didn’t start well. My boyfriend and I lost our bags at JFK. No sweat, I thought, who needs clothes in New York? I’ll buy some. We missed our taxi and then our hotel booking (when we didn’t turn up, they resold our reservation) so at 2am we got shipped to a small room in a corner of the city I hadn’t had a chance to obsessively research. We passed out and woke the next day jet-lagged and delirious. I was halfway down the stairs when my boyfriend called me back. He pointed at a sign: ‘Roof terrace’. Up we went. The exterior door at the top of the building had another sign on it: ‘No access’. Feeling reckless, we ignored it. I pushed the door open and there it all was – water towers and steaming vents and the sun bouncing off a thousand windows. The Empire State. The Chrysler. Builders yelling, hot dogs frying, taxis screeching hundreds of feet below. It wasn’t what I’d imagined – it was more.

That first electrifying glimpse of New York has never left me. Combined with the countless films, books and photographs, it inspired the opening scene of my debut novel One Night, New York. Winter solstice, 1932, a few days before Christmas. Two women are waiting on top of the Empire State Building to kill a man who has done something terrible to them. It’s a thriller and a love story, a noir and a coming-of-age tale but, most of all, it’s my love letter to New York. It reimagines two of my favourite photographs by two of the greatest 20th-century photographers. Berenice Abbott bribed a security guard and (due to the necessary light conditions) had a 15-minute window to take her light-studded 1930s night-time shot of New York from the top of the Empire State Building. Two years earlier Oscar Graubner captured photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White balancing magnificently on top of the Chrysler eagle with her camera, risking life for art. These images embody my protagonists, Frances and Agnes, as much as the city itself – they are bold, fearless, iconic.

The Empire State. The Chrysler. Builders yelling, hot dogs frying, taxis screeching hundreds of feet below. It wasn’t what I’d imagined – it was more

Later that same fateful weekend, my boyfriend and I listened to live jazz and met up with old friends, strolled across the Brooklyn Bridge and ate the greatest Mexican food I’ve ever had in a restaurant I can’t remember the name of. On the last day, we finally went up the Empire State. It was windy. My boyfriend was twitchy. I got annoyed. Then, in the middle of a group of Japanese tourists, he got down on one knee. It was every bit as cheesy and romantic as it sounds. Very Sleepless in Seattle. The Japanese tourists clapped. Every New York film I’d ever seen flashed before my eyes. I said yes. We both cried. Afterwards, we spent all our savings on an amazing meal at Blue Hill near Washington Square Park. This was before the Obamas went, before the endless wait for a table. We ate pea soup and clam chowder. We drank Champagne and forgot to save enough cash for a tip (sorry).

I don’t really care about the plot or the characters when I watch films about New York – it’s the city itself I can’t take my eyes off. It’s the dream of that teeming island and all the love stories and adventures it suggests – the endless possibilities. When I watch those movies, I want to relive the feeling that only exists in New York, the sensation of being at the epicentre of everything. Like the characters in my book I want the giddy elevation, the breathlessness and the power, the fantasy that there is nowhere higher to go. “You’ve made it,” New York shouts. “You’ve arrived. Action!”