A few minutes later Mr Fanope entered the room, followed by the woman in the red sequinned dress. He was a rather small, dapper man, wearing a white evening jacket and a bow tie. Mma Makutsi noticed that he was wearing black patent leather shoes. She had not seen a man in patent leather footwear before and she thought them most becoming. Would Mr J.L.B. Matekoni wear such shoes, she wondered? It was difficult to see him in shoes like that at the garage—the oil would spoil them so quickly—but she could hardly imagine him in shoes like that even in other circumstances. This was definitely not his world, nor the world of Mma Ramotswe, when one came to think about it. Would Mma Ramotswe be a good dancer? Traditionally built women could be rather good at dancing, thought Mma Makutsi, as they have the right bearing, at least for some dances. The tango would hardly suit somebody of Mma Ramotswe’s build, but she could certainly imagine her doing a waltz, perhaps, or a sedate jive. Traditional dancing presented no problems, of course, because the whole point about traditional dancing was that everybody could join in. A few weeks previously they had been at the orphan farm for Mma Potokwane’s birthday party, and the children’s traditional dancing group had performed in the matron’s honour, with all the housemothers joining in. Some of them were of a very traditional build—from all that sampling of the good food they cooked for the children—and they had looked very dignified as they had joined in the line of shuffling, singing dancers. But all of that was a long way away from the world of Mr Fanope and his President Hotel dance academy.

“Now then, bomma and borra,” said Mr Fanope into the microphone. “Welcome to the first class of the Academy of Dance and Movement. You have made a very good choice coming here tonight because this is the number-one place to learn ballroom dancing in Botswana. And I am the best teacher for you people. I will make dancers out of all of you, even if you have never danced before. Everybody here has a dancer inside, and I will let that dancer out. That is what I will do.”

Somebody clapped at this point, and a number of others followed suit. Mr Fanope acknowledged the applause with a small bow.

“We are going to start this evening with a simple dance. This is a dance that anybody can do, and it is called the quickstep. It goes slow, slow, quick; slow, slow, quick, quick. It is very simple, and Mma Betty and I are going to show you how to do it.”

He nodded to the musicians. As they began to play, he moved away from the microphone and turned to the woman in the red sequinned dress. Mma Makutsi watched in fascination as they danced across the floor. They were both extraordinarily light on their feet, and they both moved in such perfect harmony, as if they were one body, moving on strings pulled by a single hand.