It is no exaggeration to say that nothing I had ever tried to do before had been as confounding to me as trying to drive that car. My theoretical preparations counted for nothing when faced with the realities of the task. It was faintly ludicrous, I thought, that I was expected to master all aspects of the control of the vehicle itself – steering, gears, pedals – and, when I already had my hands full with that, I should also be able to navigate a public road where, really, any number of people might do any number of surprising things to put me off.

“I won’t be able to do it,” I told Patricia at the end of the session.

I spoke quite matter-of-factly, as was my way, but privately I found the realization quite crushing. I would walk past Fizzy as she waited at the bus stop every afternoon after school and I had got it into my head that if only I could drive past instead, if only I could roll down my window and offer her a lift, then that might be a moment where I could impress her, just in a small way, rather than it always being, as it felt to me then, the other way around. But now it looked like even that might be beyond me.

Patricia, however, waved that idea away. “Nonsense. You’ve only been trying for fifty-six minutes. Today was just for me to get to know you and you to get to know the car. Now that we’re all three of us familiar with each other, I have exactly the technique that will work. We shall put it into action next time.”

*

Despite Patricia’s breezy reassurances, it was clear to me that she had been as alarmed as I was by my poor performance in the first lesson, because, during the next two lessons, I wasn’t allowed in the driving seat at all. Instead, I was to act out the motions of controlling the car – miming the steering, the application of pressure to the pedals, the flicking on the indicator stick – while Patricia performed the real thing beside me. I found that it wasn’t long before I relaxed into the idea and began to wish that I could always drive this way – sitting quite contentedly there in the passenger seat, feeding the invisible steering wheel through my hands.

Inevitably though, there came a time when Patricia insisted I try again. This happened at the start of lesson number four, when I started the engine, checked my blind spot and immediately drove into the miniature display of the Seven Wonders of the World my neighbour had constructed in his front garden, destroying both the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the front axle of the car.

*

Although I continued to struggle with the driving itself, I couldn’t say the lessons were wholly unenjoyable. Patricia tended to exhibit a kind of exuberance that I found quite fascinating.

One week, for example, she arrived wearing a flat cap and a pair of ragged corduroy trousers held up by braces. Smudges of black dirt had been applied to her cheeks.