I searched for the right words. I needed her to know that this wasn’t about getting into her panties, however much I liked her. I just…didn’t want to leave her alone in a strange town. “Seriously,” I said, “I’ve got this engine I was going to work on and I could do with the company.”

And weirdly, I realized I actually could. I’d never minded being on my own but right then, the idea of spending the day alone when I could have her lighting up the room with that adorable awkwardness felt miserable. And maybe because I was telling the truth, she started to look like she was coming round to the idea.

“There’ll be terrible coffee,” I told her. “Or really good tea.”

She nodded. And I felt something swell in my chest: Jesus, I was excited as a teenager.

I drove her back to the café to pick up her car and then we drove in convoy to my place. She was a nervous driver so I went super slow, checking my mirror to make sure I didn’t leave her behind.

I stole my first car at fifteen, with a couple of mates. The idea was just to screech around for a while to impress the girls, then dump the car and set fire to it. But as soon as I got behind the wheel, it was like someone had thrown a switch in my brain: for the first time in my life, I was in control. We drove to a deserted parking lot and I just drove around and around, getting to know the car. I was a lousy driver, back then, but it didn’t matter: I was in love.

I went out the next night and stole another one and It became my life for the next few years. I spent every night tearing around the streets of London, most of it with the police on my tail. I must have stolen over five hundred cars by the time I was seventeen. Each night, I got a little better, until I could balance a car perfectly through each corner, until it felt like flying. I never got tired of that feeling of being in control, the opposite of how I felt at home.