And there was no reason why she should not enter into such a world, thought Mma Makutsi. After all, she was an independent woman with a position. She was an assistant detective at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency; she had her own small business in the shape of the part-time Kalahari Typing School for Men; and she had a new house, or part of a house, in a good area of town. She had something behind her now, and it did not matter if she wore very large round glasses and had a difficult complexion; it was her turn to enjoy life a bit more.

She prepared for the evening with care. Mma Makutsi did not have many dresses, but there was one, at least, a red dress with a line of small bows along the hem, that would be ideal for a dancing class. She took this dress out of the cupboard and ironed it carefully. Then she showered, under cold water, as there was no hot water in the house, and spent some time in the other tasks of making herself ready to go out. There was nail varnish to be applied, a very fine pink one that she had bought at ridiculous expense the previous week; there was lipstick; there was powder; there was something to put on her hair. All this took the best part of an hour, and then she had to walk off to the end of the road to catch the minibus into town.

“You’re looking smart, Mma,” said an older woman in the crowded vehicle. “You must be meeting a man tonight. Be careful! Men are dangerous.”

Mma Makutsi smiled. “I am going to a dancing class. It is the first time that I have gone to it.”

The woman laughed. “Oh, there will be plenty of men at a dancing class,” she said, offering Mma Makutsi a peppermint from a small bag she had extracted from a pocket. “That’s why men go to dancing classes. They go to meet pretty girls like you.”

Mma Makutsi said nothing, but as she sucked on the peppermint she thought about the prospect of meeting a man. She had not been strictly honest with herself, and she was prepared to admit it, even if only to herself. She would like to learn to dance, and she would like to meet interesting people in general, but what she really wanted to do was to meet an interesting man, and she hoped that this would be her chance. So if what her neighbour in the minibus said was true, then perhaps this was the night that it would happen.