Phuti frowned. “There is some demand,” he said. “Sometimes a person whose spouse is late, for example, might ask for a single bed. Or there are grandmothers. They like single beds if their husband is a bad snorer.”

Violet giggled. “I never snore,” she said.

Phuti said nothing. “And these beds over here,” he went on to explain. “They are the most expensive beds we have. They are what we call deluxe, first-class beds. They have very comfortable mattresses. Very soft. Very springy.”

“Very nice beds for a newly married couple,” said Violet. She lowered her eyes slightly as she spoke, in a manner suggestive of modesty, indeed suggestive in every sense. But Phuti saw only the modesty, and was impressed. He had wondered whether Violet was a bit forward, but this demure remark pointed to a nature quite in keeping with the ethos of the bed department of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop.

He showed her the desk where she would sit, and the filing system for customer information.

“I am very familiar with filing systems,” Violet said. “I studied them a lot at the Botswana Secretarial College—all different types of filing systems: alphabetical, numerical … and other types. All of them.”

Phuti smiled. “Ah, the Botswana Secretarial College! Of course, you know my fiancée there—you told me that. Grace.”

“Makutsi,” said Violet quickly, breaking into a smile. “Grace Makutsi. Of course, I knew her. We all knew her. She was very popular with everybody.”

“That is good to hear,” said Phuti. “It would not do to marry an unpopular lady, would it?”

Phuti was not particularly good at witty remarks, and this was about as witty as he became. But Violet showed her appreciation by bursting out laughing, which pleased him, as she suspected it would.

“Yes,” she said. “She was very popular with all the girls … and the boys too. Very popular with the boys.”

Phuti gave a start. He smiled, but the smile was a nervous one. “The boys too? But there were no boys, surely, at the Botswana Secretarial College, were there?”

Violet sat down at her desk and toyed with a ball-point pen. She did not look at Phuti as she spoke, but stared somewhere behind and beyond him, as if casting her mind back to the events of a distant, barely remembered past. “No, there were no boys at the college itself. But there were always boys at the gate, if you know what I mean.”

She glanced at Phuti before her gaze slid away again, off to that distant point. “There was a café near the gate, you see, and this was very popular. All the boys knew that at the end of classes the girls from the college would go to this café and sit around. So the boys always went there so that they could sit around with the girls and chat to them. We used to call it the dating shop. Hah! The dating shop. Those were the days, Rra.”