He drew in his breath. There were times in life when one had to act, and this, he suspected, was one of them.

“Would you children like to come and stay with me?” he said. “Just for a while? Then we can see how things go.”

The girl looked to Mma Potokwane, as if for confirmation.

“Rra Matekoni will look after you well,” she said. “You will be happy there.”

The girl turned to her brother and said something to him, which the adults did not hear. The boy thought for a moment, and then nodded.

“You are very kind, Rra,” she said. “We will be very happy to come with you.”

Mma Potokwane clapped her hands.

“Go and pack, children,” she said. “Tell your housemother that they are to give you clean clothes.”

The girl turned her wheelchair round and left the room, accompanied by her brother.

“What have I done?” muttered Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, under his breath.

Mma Potokwane gave him his answer.

“A very good thing,” she said.

CHAPTER NINE

THE WIND MUST COME FROM SOMEWHERE

THEY DROVE out of the village in Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van. The dirt road was rough, virtually disappearing at points into deep potholes or rippling into a sea of corrugations that made the van creak and rattle in protest. The farm was only eight miles away from the village, but they made slow progress, and Mma Ramotswe was relieved to have Mma Potsane with her. It would be easy to get lost in the featureless bush, with no hills to guide one and each tree looking much like the next one. Though for Mma Potsane the landscape, even if dimly glimpsed, was rich in associations. Her eyes squeezed almost shut, she peered out of the van, pointing out the place where they had found a stray donkey years before, and there, by that rock, that was where a cow had died for no apparent reason. These were the intimate memories that made the land alive—that bound people to a stretch of baked earth, as valuable to them, and as beautiful, as if it were covered with sweet grass.

Mma Potsane sat forward in her seat. “There,” she said. “Do you see it over there? I can see things better if they are far away. I can see it now.”

Mma Ramotswe followed her gaze. The bush had become denser, thick with thorn trees, and these concealed, but not quite obscured, the shape of the buildings. Some of these were typical of the ruins to be found in southern Africa; whitewashed walls that seemed to have crumbled until they were a few feet above the ground, as if flattened from above; others still had their roofs, or the framework of their roofs, the thatch having collapsed inwards, consumed by ants or taken by birds for nests.

“That is the farm?”

“Yes. And over there—do you see over there?—that is where we lived.”