Abigail

Nobody really knows who Abigail is. The first time she appears is at the front desk of the publishing house where Sofia works. She leaves a package for her and walks away.

Sofia barely notices. She drops the package on her desk, unopened, and goes on with her day. Only much later will she find out that what was inside mattered a lot.

That same night, after a fight with her best friend, Nina, at a bar, Sofia takes a cab. Behind the wheel is Abigail again.

When Sofia's phone dies, the driver lends her own. Sofia gets out of the car and forgets to give it back. That's the phone that rings with a call from an unknown number. Sofia heads up to the roof looking for a signal, opens the door to the terrace and ends up in 1830.

Abigail doesn't leave Sofia alone in the past. She shows up there and talks to her, while Sofia keeps asking how to get back and why she landed in that place of all places. The answers are never complete, and Abigail seems to know much more than she says.

Annoyed, Sofia starts to see her as a kind of fairy godmother, and not a very friendly one.

When Sofia returns to the present, hurt by Ian, Abigail's package changes everything. Inside is the copy of Pride and Prejudice Sofia left in 1830, with a letter from Ian.

Soon after, another call from Abigail comes in. She's the one who sends Sofia back to the past, this time to stay with the man she loves.

In Carina Rissi's book Perdida (2011), there's no Abigail in this role: the magic phone is sold by a mysterious saleswoman at an electronics store, who later only sends Sofia short text messages. The movie turned that figure into a character who appears on screen.