Mr Polopetsi looked away for a moment. “I am not cross with her. I hope that she will change her mind some day. Then we will talk again.”

Mma Makutsi looked at her desk. There were several letters which had to be typed, and she had intended to type them the following day. But here was Mr Polopetsi, with his ability to type, and it occurred to her that she had never once been in a position to dictate a letter and have somebody else type it. Now here she was with letters to be typed and a good typist at her disposal.

“I have some letters to dictate,” she said. “You could type them as I dictate. That will save time.”

Mr Polopetsi lost no time in setting himself up behind the typewriter at Mma Makutsi’s desk, while she installed herself in Mma Ramotswe’s chair, several sheets of paper in her hand. This is delicious, she thought. After all these years, I am now sitting in an office chair and dictating to a man. This was a very long way from those early days in Bobonong.

MMA MAKUTSI was late in arriving at the dancing class that evening, and as she walked along the corridor at the President Hotel she could hear the band in full flow and the sound of numerous feet on the wooden floor. She appeared at the entrance and made her way to a seat at the side, only to be intercepted by Phuti Radiphuti, who had been waiting for her. Her heart sank. She did not wish to be unkind, but she had hoped that perhaps he would not be there and that she might have the chance to dance with somebody else. Now she was trapped, and there would be more stumbling and tripping while everybody else made progress and moved with greater and greater ease.

Phuti Radiphuti beamed with pleasure as he led her onto the floor. The band, which had been augmented by another guitarist, was playing more loudly than the last time, with the result that it was difficult for her to hear what anybody was saying, let alone to understand those with a speech impediment. So Mma Makutsi had to strain to make out her partner’s words, and even when she thought she could do so, she was puzzled by their apparent lack of sense.

“This is a waltz,” he tried to say, as they started to dance. But Mma Makutsi heard: This is all false. She wondered why he would say such a thing. Did he sense that she was only dancing with him out of pity, or a sense of duty? Or did he mean something quite different?

So she decided to seek clarification. “Why?” she asked.