“You don't need a real license,” Tom said. The stern-faced ex-RAF instructor had already chided me for dressing inappropriately in my short skirt and open-toed sandals. Now I realized he wanted to get rid of me.

He continued. “You want a wife's license. Forget the technical mumbo-jumbo. I'll show you the radio and we'll go up – you can even play with the flight controls.”

A strangled sound escaped me. A wife's license?

Getting a pilot's license was the furthest thing from her mind – until an ex-RAF instructor suggested that she wasn't competent to do so. The thing is, he could be right. Sylvia has just a few weeks to prove that she can fly as well as any man.

You Fly Like a Woman tells the story of one woman's search for confidence as she stumbles into a man's world.