“Watch what we do,” shouted Mr Fanope, above the music. “Watch us now. Slow, slow, quick, quick.”

After a few minutes, he disengaged from Mma Betty and the band stopped playing.

“Choose your partners,” he shouted. “Men, you get up and ask the ladies. If anybody is left over, Mma Betty and I will take it in turns to be your partner. Mma Betty will dance with men, and I shall dance with the ladies. Men, get up and choose a lady.”

At this signal, the men rose to their feet and crossed the floor or turned to a lady sitting nearby. There was a sudden flurry of activity, and Mma Makutsi caught her breath in the excitement of it all. A man was coming towards her, a tall man with a moustache and a blue shirt. She looked down at her shoes. He would be a good man to dance with, a man who would lead his partner confidently.

But he did not ask her; he approached the woman sitting next to her, who rose up smiling and took his hand. Mma Makutsi waited. Everybody seemed to be finding a partner and moving onto the floor—everybody except her. She lowered her eyes. This was the humiliation she had feared; she should not have come. She would end up being danced with by Mr Fanope, out of charity, and everybody would know that nobody had asked her. It’s my glasses, she told herself. It’s my glasses, and the fact that I am a plain girl. I am just a plain girl from Bobonong.

She looked up. A man was standing in front of her, bending down to speak to her. In the general hubbub of noise she could not make out exactly what he was saying, but he was clearly a man, and he was clearly asking her to dance.

Mma Makutsi smiled and stood up. “Thank you, Rra,” she said. “I am called Grace Makutsi.”

He nodded, and pointed back to the dance floor, and they made their way together into the thick of the crowd. Mma Makutsi took a surreptitious glance at her partner. He was slightly older than she was, she thought; not very good-looking, but with a kind face. And he walked in a slightly strange way, as if his shoes did not quite fit him.

“What is your name, Rra?” she asked, as they stood together amongst the other couples, waiting for the music to start.

The man stared at her. It seemed that it was an effort for him to speak.

“I am called Phuti Radiphuti,” he said. That is what he said, but it did not come out as directly as that. Called was c … c … c … called and Phuti was ph … ph … phuti.

It was a bad speech impediment, and Mma Makutsi’s heart sank. She was a kind woman, like Mma Ramotswe, but it was typical of her luck, she thought, that she should be the last to be picked and then to be chosen by a man who moved in an odd way and had a very pronounced stutter. But he was still a man, wasn’t he, and at least she was dancing with somebody and not sitting unhappily, unwanted. So she smiled encouragingly and asked him whether he had ever danced before.