She reached out and gave the filing cabinet an affectionate pat. Then, on impulse, she bent down and kissed its scratched and dented metal surface. The metal felt cool to her lips and smelled acrid, as metal can—a smell of rust and sharpness.

“Dumela, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi from the doorway.

Mma Ramotswe straightened up.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Mma Makutsi. “Just carry on doing whatever it was that you were doing …” She glanced at the filing cabinet and then at her employer.

Mma Ramotswe returned to her desk. “I was thinking about that filing cabinet,” she said. “And suddenly I felt very grateful to it. I know that it must have looked very strange to you, Mma.”

“Not at all,” said Mma Makutsi. “I am grateful to it too. It keeps all our records safe.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Well, I’m not sure if they’re completely safe,” she said. “In fact, I was just wondering whether we should do something about locking them. Confidentiality is very important. You know that, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi looked thoughtfully at the filing cabinets. “That is true,” she said. “But I do not think we would ever find a key for those old locks.” She paused. “Maybe we could put a chain around them, with a padlock?”

Mma Ramotswe did not think that this would be a good idea. It would look absurd to have chained filing cabinets, and would give quite the wrong impression to clients. It was bad enough having an office inside a garage, but it would be worse to have something quite so odd-looking as a chain around a cabinet. It would be better to buy a couple of new filing cabinets, even if they would not be as sturdy and substantial as these old ones. There was probably enough money in the office account to do this, and they had not spent very much on equipment recently. In fact, they had spent nothing, apart from three pula for a new teaspoon, which had been required after one of the apprentices had used their existing teaspoon to fix a gearbox and had broken it. The thought of furniture reminded her. Mma Makutsi was about to marry, was she not? And was she not about to marry into the furniture trade?

“Phuti Radiphuti!” Mma Ramotswe exclaimed.

Mma Makutsi looked up sharply. “Phuti?”

“Your fiancé, Mma,” went on Mma Ramotswe. “Does he do office furniture as well as house furniture?”

Mma Makutsi looked down at her shoes. Fiancé? she imagined hearing the shoes say. We used to be engaged to a pair of men’s shoes but we haven’t seen them for some time! Is it still on, Boss?

Mma Ramotswe smiled across her desk. “I wouldn’t expect a new filing cabinet for nothing,” she said. “But he could give us a trade price, could he not? Or he would know where we could get it cheaply.” She noticed Mma Makutsi’s expression, and tailed off. “If he could …”

Mma Makutsi seemed reluctant to speak. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and then out of the door. “He did not come to my place last night,” she said. “I had cooked for him. But he did not come.”