The thought that Phuti might merely have mistaken the day cheered her, but only briefly. Phuti went to eat at his father’s house on a Sunday, and it was unlikely that he would have mistaken a Sunday for any other day, as he did not go to work on a Sunday. If, then, he had mixed the days up and gone to eat elsewhere, it could only have been because he had gone to either his sister’s or his aunt’s house, as those were the only other houses where he went to eat. Neither the aunt nor the sister would have failed to point out to him that he had come to them on the wrong day. Both were very well aware of what day of the week it was, especially the aunt. That aunt, who had played an important role in the building up of the family furniture business, was noted for the acuity of her mind. Phuti himself had told Mma Makutsi how his aunt had an uncanny ability for remembering the details of what everything cost, and this applied not only to present-day prices, but to prices going back to the days before independence. She knew, for example, what the traders in the local store used to ask for paraffin in those silver-coloured jerry cans, and how much a large tin of Lyons golden syrup or a can of Fray Bentos bully beef cost in the late nineteen-fifties; or Lion matches, for that matter, or a Supersonic Radio imported from the radio factory in Bulawayo. Such an aunt would have informed Phuti that he was in the wrong house on the wrong day, had he come to her door unexpectedly.

No, she realised that this was clutching at straws; Phuti Radiphuti had not come to dinner because he had gone cool on her after her feminist disclosure. He had been frightened off, he had been discouraged by the thought that he would have to live with a feminist who would nag and bully him. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it were, some men, and he must be one of them, wanted women who did not make them feel guilty for wanting the things that they wanted. And she should have sensed that, she told herself. Phuti Radiphuti so obviously had a confidence problem, with his speech impediment and his hesitant ways, and of course such a man would not want to marry a woman who would be too forceful. He would want a woman who looked up to him, just a little, and who made him feel manly. She should have understood that, she realised, and she should have built him up rather than made him feel threatened.