He sat back, and the little plane shot forward down the runway. The trees were so close, he thought, the grass so soft that he could jump out now, roll over, and escape; but there was no getting away from Mma Potokwane, who looked at him crossly and shook a finger in admonition. And then they were airborne, and he looked out of the window of the plane at the land below him, which was growing smaller and smaller, a miniaturised Botswana of cattle like ants and roads like thin strips of twisting brown thread. Oh, it was so beautiful to look down on his land and see the clouds and the blue and all the air. One might so easily step out onto such clouds and drift away, off to the West, over the great brown, and alight somewhere where the lions walked and where there were springs of water and tall trees and little sign of man.

Mma Potokwane pulled on the controls of the plane and they circled, hugging the edge of the town so far below. He looked down and he saw Zebra Drive; it was so easy to spot it, and was that not Mma Ramotswe waving to him from her yard, and Mma Makutsi, in her new green shoes? They were waving, smiling up at him, pointing to a place on the ground where he might land. He turned to Mma Potokwane, who smiled at him now and pointed to the handle of the door.

He reached out and no more than touched the door before it flew open. He felt the wind on his face, and the panic rose in him, and he tried to stop himself falling, holding onto one of the levers in the plane, a little thing that gave him no purchase. Mma Potokwane was shouting at him, taking her hands off the controls of the plane to shove him out, and now kicked him firmly in the back with those flat brown shoes which she wore to walk about the orphan farm. “Out!” she cried, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, mute with fear, slipped out into the empty air and tumbled, head over heels, now looking at the sky, now at the ground, down to the earth that was still so far away beneath him.