My wife is catching me up on the story of the car.

“They said it was ready,” she says, “but when I got there they’d lost the key.”

“Christ,” I say.

“I was there for two hours,” she says. “Someone had to drive me home. Then they found the key.”

“But it’s fixed?” I say.

“They replaced a part,” she says.

“And that solves everything?” I say.

“I asked, and he said: ‘Yes, Madam’. But honestly, they don’t care. It’s chaos down there. It’s like they’ve had to recall every car they’ve ever made.”

“So does it seem fixed to you?” I say. I have a pressing reason for asking. I have to drive to a festival with a bunch of equipment and a drummer.

If I was going to hire a vehicle to replace our car, I should have done it already.

In the morning my sister arrives from America, and I pick her up at the station.

“Nice car,” she says.

“You have no idea,” I say. But then I think: she’s right. It is a nice car, if you can ignore the oil light and the flat tyre warning winking at you in succession.

The next day, with the drummer in the back and my sister in the passenger seat, we set off for Cornbury. Before we’ve gone a mile I stop to put air in the tyres.

“One was a bit low, but no big deal,” I say to my sister.

“That’s good,” she says.

“And I know there’s oil in it,” I say. “So at least two of these lights are lying.”

“The ghost in the machine,” says the drummer.

“Sometimes you have to reset the warning after you fix the problem,” my sister says.

“That makes sense,” I say. The instructions will be in the manual, which is sitting on our kitchen table.

The sun is out, traffic is light and we are making good time. I realise that on all the occasions I have driven this car, I’ve never had the slightest problem. I only have my wife’s testimony for its many failures. Perhaps, I think, she has some illness where she attributes symptoms to the car for complex psychological reasons.

“You’re getting off here,” says my sister, who is navigating.

“OK,” I say. As I pull into the left lane, a new warning light goes off with a sharp ping. The car suddenly slows. When I press on the accelerator, it revs wildly in a lower gear.

“What’s happening?” I say.

Fortunately we are soon stuck in crawling festival traffic. By the time we reach Cornbury’s gates, I have to put my foot to the floor to get the car across the road. I ring my wife, who goes to retrieve the manual.

“It’s a cog, with an exclamation mark inside,” I say.

“Yellow or red?” she says.

“I don’t remember,” I say.

“Gear box overheating,” she says. “It’s exactly what happened to me, but you didn’t believe it.”

“I never said that out loud,” I say.

We are the last band on at the festival. This is not an appropriate time to describe my car troubles to an audience, but I can’t help it. We manage to squeeze in an encore just before the curfew.

“Good night, Cornbury!” says the singer. The audience cheers.

“Seriously,” I say. “If anyone here knows anything about transmissions, see me after.” No one does.

It is close to midnight when my sister and I set off, the drummer having secured a more reliable lift home. The gearbox light has disappeared, and the car behaves itself all the way to the M40. Soon we are looking down on the London skyline.

“It could still be that the light is the only issue,” I say.

“OK,” my sister says.

“The car is fooled into thinking there’s a problem, and slows down as a precaution.”

“Dude,” she says. “Why do you have the heat on?”

“I don’t,” I say. “I have the air con on.”

“Hot air is pouring out my side,” she says. “My shoes are melting.”

“Huh,” I say. “That’s weird.”

“I smell burning,” she says. “Do you smell burning?”