The lawyer sister came to visit me this weekend. She’s notoriously late, always with a ready stock of excuses, but it was a beautiful afternoon, and, although I didn’t expect her at the appointed hour, I strolled down to the ferry landing to meet her just in case. I watched the cars unload, hers not among them, and wished I had lied about the departure time. I walked back to the house, where, predictably, the phone was ringing.

“How’s your driving?” my sister asked jovially. “Can you pick me up at the convenience store by the casino? My wheel caught on fire.”

This was an impressive excuse even for the Lawyer Sis. The ferry only runs once an hour on weekends, and the next one was about to depart, so I didn’t wait for explanations, grabbed the car keys and the dog and drove back down to the dock. This would be the first time I had driven off island by myself (and my first solo ferry attempt), but it was a straight run of six or seven miles up the road to the casino and anyway, I could hardly refuse. There wasn’t anyone else to get her.

My sister spotted our mother’s car and cheerfully waved me towards the space next to her 4×4. A man came out of the convenience store, strolled over and we shook hands. Looking at the grey green powder covering the back right tire and the tarmac around it I asked what exactly had happened. The man, who had been travelling along the same road, said he noticed the smell a mile or two back. He checked all his gauges and was sure it wasn’t him. He’d mentioned the smell to his kid. Something’s burning, he had said.

At the red light by the casino he pulled up next to my sister and asked, “Ma’am did you know your wheel’s on fire?”

“Well, no,” said my sister the lawyer, “as I matter of fact I wasn’t aware of that.”

The man then leapt from his car, opened the front passenger door of my sister’s car, grabbed the forty-eight ounce drink cup from her hand and threw its contents on the tire. His kid said, “Dad, what if there was alcohol in that cup?” As the lights changed, the man advised her to pull into the gas station on the corner by the casino.

He was defending this advice when we chatted. “I guess you’re not from around here?” he explained. “Because if you were from around here you would have known there is a water point just there.” And he gestured to the other side of the station. “That’s where I was hoping you would pull in.”

Instead my sister pulled into the main part of the station and four guys immediately appeared brandishing fire extinguishers and gesticulating wildly for her to take herself and her burning wheel as far away from the pumps as possible. The men discharged their extinguishers onto the tire, and, in a few moments, first the city police, then the county police, and then the reservation police arrived. They all strolled around the car and shook their heads while the red light man explained, “I threw her drink on the tire.”

After a few more minutes a large fire truck appeared and parked behind her car. The fire officer got out, crouched down, and solemnly sniffed the tire. He said, “It’s out.”

The men with the fire extinguishers said, “Well, yeah.” The man from the red light repeated, “I threw her drink on the tire.” The fire officer annouced, “Okay, I’m calling this cleared. Everyone can go home.”

The county police and the city police took off. The man from the red light wandered away to the convenience store. But the reservation cop, though his radio kept bursting into life with reports of a man with chest pains, and then of a vagrant beggar, said he would wait until he was sure my sister was okay. He didn’t leave until a tow truck was ordered and my car was turning into the service station.

When the car had been towed away I drove us back onto the ferry where I got a hand signalled severe telling off for following the car in front of me instead of waiting to be pointed at. Newbie stuff. Now I know.

And now you know not be expecting metaphors.