“You have already said that, Mma Ramotswe,” Mma Makutsi pointed out politely. “You have already said that you will be available for a meeting on that day. Now I think you need to say …”

“Oh, I cannot concentrate, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I'm sitting here and just through the wall over there my van is being taken to pieces. And it will not be good news, you know, at the end of it all.”

Mma Makutsi thought that this was probably true, but she did her best to comfort her employer. “You never know, Mma. There are miracles from time to time. There could be a miracle for your van.”

Mma Ramotswe appreciated this but knew that there would be no miracle. And when Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni came into the office half an hour or so later, wiping his hands on a piece of lint, she knew in an instant what was to come.

“I'm very sorry, Mma Ramotswe,” he began. “The engine is just too old …”

He did not finish, for Mma Ramotswe had let out a wail and Mma Makutsi had leapt to her feet to comfort her.

“Don't cry, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “You mustn't cry.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni stood awkwardly witnessing this show of female distress and the solidarity it provoked. He would have liked to have comforted his wife, too, to put his arm about her, but he was still covered in grease, and this seemed to him now to be a moment to which he could add little. So he inclined his head and slipped discreetly out of the office, leaving the two women together.

“I'm sure that he'll get you another van,” said Mma Makutsi. “And you'll come to love that one too. You'll see.”

Mma Ramotswe struggled to control herself. “I should not cry over a little thing like this,” she sniffed. “There are big things to cry over, such big things, and I am wasting my tears. It is only a van.”

“It's a van you have loved a lot,” said Mma Makutsi. “I know how it feels.” She had loved her lace handkerchief, a small thing really, but one which for a time had been her only special possession. Everything else had been entirely functional, designed to meet the requirements of a life of poverty and hardship; that handkerchief had been about beauty, and fineness, and the possibility of something better.

“It is like a bit of Botswana's history,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is like a bit of Botswana's history that is about to be thrown on the heap. Just like that.”

Mma Makutsi was not entirely convinced by this analogy but at least it gave her an idea. “Perhaps the museum would take it,” she ventured. “They have some old ox-carts there. Your van could stand beside them.”

Mma Ramotswe thought this unlikely. They would not want an old white van; there were plenty of old vehicles about and there was no reason for her van to be singled out. She was not famous in any way, and nobody would be interested in a van just because she had driven it. She pointed this out to Mma Makutsi, who shook her head vigorously. “Museums are very interested in ordinary things these days,” she said. “They like to show how life is for ordinary people—for you and me.”