The conversation was slow to begin with, but Mma Makutsi noticed that as he began to relax in her company, Phuti Radiphuti’s speech became more confident and clearer. She was now able to understand most of what he had to say, although every now and then he seemed to stumble over a word, and when this happened it could be some time before something intelligible emerged.

There seemed to be a lot to talk about. He explained where he was from (the South) and what he was doing in Gaborone (he had a job in a furniture store in Broadhurst, where he sold chairs and tables). He asked about her; about the school she had gone to in Bobonong, about the Botswana Secretarial College, and about her job at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. He confessed that he had no idea of what a private detective agency would do and he was interested to find out.

“It’s very straightforward,” said Mma Makutsi. “Most people think that it is very exciting. But it isn’t, it really isn’t.”

“There are very few exciting jobs,” observed Phuti Radiphuti. “Most of us have very dull work to do. I just sell tables and chairs. There is nothing exciting in that.”

“But it is important work,” Mma Makutsi countered. “Where would we be if we had no chairs and tables?”

“We would be on the floor,” said Phuti Radiphuti solemnly.

They thought about this for a moment, and then Mma Makutsi laughed. He had answered her with such gravity, as if the question had been an important one, rather than a mere reflection. She looked at him, and saw him smile in response. Yes, he understood that what he had said was funny. That was important in itself. It was good to be able to share such things with somebody else; the little jokes of life, the little absurdities.

They sat together for a few more minutes, finishing their drinks. Then Mma Makutsi rose to her feet and announced that she was going to the ladies’ room and would meet him back in the dance hall for the rest of the class.

She found a door labelled Powder Room which bore an outline picture of a woman in a long, flowing skirt. She went in, and immediately regretted it.

“So! There you are, Grace Makutsi!” said the woman standing at the basin.

Mma Makutsi stopped, but the door had closed behind her, and she could hardly pretend that she had come into the wrong room.

She looked at the woman at the basin, and the name came back to her. This was the woman she had seen in the dance class, and her name was Violet Sephotho. She was one of the worst of the glamorous, empty-headed set at the Botswana Secretarial College, and here she was applying powder to her face in the aptly named Powder Room of the President Hotel.