IT WAS TIME for Mma Ramotswe to visit Mma Silvia Potokwane, the redoubtable matron of the orphan farm. There was no particular reason for Mma Ramotswe to pay a visit; she had received no summons from the matron, and there was no request to borrow Mr J.L.B. Matekoni for some maintenance task that needed doing. This was purely a social visit, of the sort that Mma Ramotswe liked to make when she felt that it was time to sit and talk. People did not spend enough time sitting and talking, she thought, and it was important that sitting and talking time be preserved.

The two women had known one another for many years, and had moved into that most comfortable of territories, that of an old friendship that could be picked up and put down at will without damage. Sometimes several months would go by without the two seeing one another, and this would make no difference. A conversation left unfinished at the beginning of the hot season could be resumed after the rains; a question asked in January might be answered in June, or even later, or indeed not at all. There was no need for formality or caution, and the faults of each were known to the other.

What were the faults of Mma Potokwane? Well, Mma Ramotswe might list those quite readily, were she to put her mind to it. Everybody knew that Mma Potokwane was pushy; she had pushed Mr J.L.B. Matekoni around for years, and he had meekly submitted to such treatment. There had been innumerable requests for help in keeping that water pump alive, well beyond the limits of its natural life, and then there had been the unreliable minibus, which should have been scrapped years before but which was still on the road thanks to the unsurpassed mechanical skills of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. At least the pump had been disposed of when he had eventually stood up to her and told her that its time had come, but he had yet to make a similar stand over the minibus.