She said goodbye to Mma Mokoti, who saw her to the door, and then she went out into the night to where the tiny white van was parked. The engine started first time, as it always did, now that it was being regularly looked after by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and she was soon negotiating her way back up the rough dirt track, the undelivered cheque still firmly in her pocket. It will remain undelivered, she thought, because of the conversation which she had had with Mma Mokoti. So Note had been married before he met her. Well, if that were the case, then one might well ask the question: Did he get divorced?

SHE HAD ALMOST REACHED the end of the track when the tiny white van died. The end came suddenly, just as the end may come to those who suffer a stroke or a heart attack, without notice, when they are least expecting it. Certainly Mma Ramo-tswe was not thinking of the possibility of mechanical failure; her thoughts, rather, were on the conversation she had had with Mma Mokoti. It had been a painful visit for her, at least at the beginning. It had been hard to go back to that house, which had actually been the scene of one of Note’s assaults on her, one weekend all those years ago when they had been the only people there and he had been drunk and had turned on her with vicious suddenness. But she was glad that she had gone now, and had been able to talk to Note’s mother. Even if she had not revealed that information about her son, it had done both of them good, she thought, to talk. For the mother, it would perhaps be easier for her to know that she, Precious Ramotswe, did not hold anything against her, and had forgiven her son. That would be one less thing in a life which she suspected had been full of things to worry about. And for her part, saying to the mother what she had said had cost her very little, and had made her feel much better anyway. And then there had been the massive relief of realising that perhaps she had not committed bigamy after all. If Note had still been married when he had married her, then there was no marriage in the first place. That meant that her marriage to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was perfectly legal.

It was while she was thinking of this that the tiny white van suddenly lost all power. She was not going at all fast when it happened, barely ten miles an hour on that pitted surface, but the drawing to a halt happened very quickly and the engine stopped.