And Puso, what about him? He was a strange boy—a little bit distant, which was to be expected, perhaps, from a child who had had such a difficult start in life. She felt now that they were getting through to him, but sometimes she wondered how he would turn out. Had he been the natural son of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, then she might have said that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's gentle breeding would come through; but he was not, he was the son of a man whom they would never know anything about.

Such doubts were only to be expected, and it would be strange if foster parents never thought of these things. Yet there was no point in allowing niggling doubts to flower into consuming worries. The important thing was to get on with life and to give the children the love they deserved. She did that, and she knew that in their hearts they loved her back.

As she watched Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni walk out to his truck that morning, Mma Ramotswe felt herself overcome by a sudden feeling of vulnerability, by a fear that her familiar world was hanging by a thread. We were tiny creatures, really; tiny and afraid, trying to hold our place on the little platform that was our earth. So while the world about us might seem so solid, so permanent, it was not really. We were all at the mercy of chance, no matter how confident we felt, hostages to our own human frailty. And that applied not only to people, but to countries too. Things could go wrong and entire nations could be led into a world of living nightmare; it had happened, and was happening still. Poor Africa; it did not deserve the things that had been done to it. Africa, which could stand for love and happiness and joy, could also be a place of suffering and shame. But that suffering was not the only story, thought Mma Ramotswe. There was a story of courage and determination and goodness that could be told as well, and she was proud that her country, her Botswana, had been part of that.

Before getting into the truck Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni turned and waved. She waved back from the window and suddenly, inexplicably, felt an urge to rush out into the yard to speak to him before he left, to tell him something. She stood quite still; the urge was a strong one, but there was a part of her that said that she should not be silly, that she should stay where she was. She was holding a kitchen towel in her hand and found herself twisting it in her anxiety. Now she flung it aside and made for the door.

He had started his truck and was reversing down the driveway. When she appeared round the side of the house, he spotted her and waved again, thinking that she was on her way out to the garden. But then he saw that she was waving to him as if she had forgotten to tell him something, some message, no doubt, about picking up something from the shops in Lobatse before he came home. There was a butcher there who was a distant relation of Obed Ramotswe and gave them good cuts of meat at a special price. It would be about that, he thought.