The children had left her to herself. Adults were sometimes strange in their behaviour—all children knew that—and the best thing to do in such circumstances was to leave the adult alone. Matters preyed on their mind, matters to which children could never be party; a tactful child understood that very well.

But when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni came home that evening and he too seemed to be preoccupied and distant, they knew that something was very wrong.

“There is something bad happening at the garage,” whispered Motholeli to her brother. “They are very unhappy.”

He had looked at her anxiously. “Will we have to go back to the orphan farm?” he asked.

“I hope not,” she said. “I am happy living here in Zebra Drive. Perhaps they will get over it.”

She tried to sound confident, but it was difficult, and her spirits sank even further when they sat down at the table for supper and Mma Ramotswe forgot even to say grace and remained silent for almost the whole meal. Afterwards, wheeling herself into her brother’s room, where she found him lying disconsolately on his bed, she told him that whatever happened, he was not to worry about being by himself.

“Even if we go back to Mma Potokwane,” she said, “she will make sure that we are kept together. She has always done that.”

Puso stared at her miserably. “I do not want to leave. I am very happy here in this house. This is the best food I have ever eaten in my life.”

“And they are the best people we have ever met,” she said. “There is nobody in Botswana, nobody, as good and kind as Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Nobody.”

The little boy nodded vigorously. “I know that,” he said. “Will they come and see us at the orphan farm?”

“Of course they will come—if we have to go back,” she reassured him. But her reassurance could not prevent the tears that he now began to shed, tears for everything that had happened to him, for the loss of the mother whom he could not remember, for the thought that in this large and frightening world there was nobody, other than his sister, to whom he could turn, who might not be taken away from him.

AFTER THE CHILDREN had gone off to their rooms for the night, Mma Ramotswe made herself a cup of bush tea and walked out onto the verandah. She had thought that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was in the living room, as she had heard the radio on in there and had assumed that he was sitting in his favourite chair brooding over whatever mechanical problem it was that had made him so quiet that night. She imagined that it was a mechanical problem, because that was all that seemed to upset Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; and such problems inevitably solved themselves.

“You are very quiet tonight,” she observed.