“She won’t charge you,” my father said.

This gave me pause. I’d already established that one driving lesson a week would cost me most of my earnings from my Saturday job, serving scrambled eggs and coffee to taxi drivers as they waited for their next fare.

“I’ve got a big job on for her,” my father explained. “She’s renovating her house. A big old thing, it is. Needs all the pipework on the ground floor rerouting. She was fretting about the cost, so I came up with a deal; I knock down the price, she gets you behind the wheel.”

I took a moment to consider.

“She’s nice,” my father encouraged. “Nice woman. Friendly.”

In the end, I decided I should give the woman a go, at least.

*

As I waited for my new instructor by the wall at the front of my house, I felt determined, if not optimistic, about my goal. I had spent the previous few weeks immersed in driving theory and could confidently name all the key features of a dashboard and all the roads within a two-mile radius of my house.

The car approached at quite some speed, the woman seeming to notice me only at the last moment before slamming on the brakes. She was driving a small tomato-red Vauxhall Corsa with scuffed bumpers and a length of parcel tape wrapped around one wing mirror. I was, I remember, rather surprised by the worn condition of the car, but then I supposed learner drivers would be prone to scrapes so it was probably futile to try to keep it in pristine condition. I noticed that the word ‘Pat’ had been painted on the side in thick rough strokes. Below that, a large letter L had been created out of two pieces of white tape stuck at right angles to each other.

The woman flung open the car door and clambered out. She stood in the middle of the road with her hands on her hips, surveying me with a broad smile. She had red hair sticking up all over her head and glasses with thick blue plastic frames. Her clothing was a collage of prints and colours – pinks, golds, greens. Great swathes of fabrics draped around her.

“Lucy!” the woman cried, throwing her hands up in the air. “You’re just as I imagined!” She came around the passenger side of the car and gently pushed me in the direction of the driver’s door. “Hop in, then,” she said, still smiling wildly. “Show me what you’ve got.”

*

Her name was Patricia – “Do not call me Pat, despite what the sign says; it makes me sound like something a cow would produce” – and she worked as an actress, appearing in historical productions up and down the country. The driving school was something she’d begun only recently, she said, as a way of supplementing her income. I wasn’t sure how I felt about my tutelage coming from a part-timer, someone without a true vocation, but I reminded myself of the generous financial arrangement my father had come to and decided to let my concerns slide.