I was going to learn to drive… that was my first priority on reaching the age of eighteen. I filled out the forms, posted the letter and waited for the provisional licence to arrive. It came a few days before we were due to go on holiday, touring in the south of England with a tent in the back of the car. It was the 70s. My first husband, like many young men of that era, had a passion for the big American style coupés and to be fair, we could have probably slept in the boot. It wouldn’t have looked out of place on the set of Starsky and Hutch. It was even the right colour… and he drove with that reckless, fine-cutting skill so many young men affect.

Even so, I was going to learn to drive it. I knew it intimately, having dangled off the end of…