I stopped speaking suddenly. I didn’t know why I had felt the need to go on so, how unnecessary of me! It was just the incident had made rather an impression on me. I’d assumed at first that Fizzy must have been calling in on lots of people, delivering a good number of presents, to have come all that way. But, she’d said, no. She’d just come for me. I still wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

If Patricia was bored by my story, she didn’t show it. She just nodded slowly, as if weighing the anecdote up.

“I make that the hour,” she said eventually. “Best get you home.”

*

I supposed Patricia must have liked the sound of Fizzy from my Christmas story because she continued to ask about her from time to time. I didn’t really see why she would want to hear about someone she had never met, but I was happy to keep her updated on the funny things Fizzy had said or the remarkable ideas she’d had. There were certainly plenty of those.

*

When Patricia arrived for our lesson one week in late February, she announced she had lost her peacock.

“Lionel,” she said, by way of explanation. “I only got him recently. Thought he’d look decorative, wandering about the gardens and so forth. But the blasted man has wandered off. So we shall have to round him up.”

That lesson was spent with me at the wheel, following Patricia’s hunches about where Lionel would most likely have headed, and every so often pulling over so Patricia could dart across the pavement and shake a bush she suspected of harbouring him.

By the end of the lesson, Lionel was still at large.

*

My father liked to hear how the driving lessons were going, so they were often the subject of dinner-time conversation. In fact, it seemed we were speaking more than ever before. I was worried he might think me hopeless. I didn’t pride myself on much, but I did so like to think of myself as capable and here I was, flailing about quite incapably. He didn’t seem unduly alarmed by the slowness of my progress, though. In fact, he seemed amused by my hiccups – and by my reports of Patricia’s reactions to them.

His plumbing work at Patricia’s house continued, with each task apparently uncovering something else needing to be rectified, so I supposed he must be quite familiar with Patricia’s eccentricities himself.

*

I was by now seven months into my tuition; my original schedule had long been forgotten. Sometimes a whole lesson passed without serious mishap, as it had during the search for Lionel, but it would be followed by another where I was barely able to change gear without causing Patricia to shriek and wave apologies to nearby pedestrians.

“I’ve had an idea,” Patricia said one spring afternoon. “Next time, we’re going on an outing.”

I was suspicious. “An outing where?”

“It’s a surprise. I’ll pick you up next week, at the normal time.” Then, almost as an afterthought, she added. “Bring Fizzy with you. We need an extra person.”