She felt lonely. In spite of the sounds from the garage, in spite of the fact that immediately on the other side of the office wall was Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, her husband and helpmate, she felt alone, bereft. She had once been told by an aunt in Mochudi how, shortly after being widowed, she had seen her husband in empty rooms, in places where he liked to sit in the sun, coming back down the track that he always walked down; and these were not tricks of the light, but aches of the mind, its sad longings. And now, after her assistant had been absent for so short a time, she had looked up suddenly when she thought she heard Mma Makutsi say something, or had seen something move on the other side of the room. That movement was a real trick of the light of course, but it still brought home the fact that she was on her own now.

And that was difficult. Mma Ramotswe was normally quite content with her own company. She could sit on her verandah on Zebra Drive and drink tea in perfect solitude, with her only company that of the birds outside, or of the tiny, scrambling geckos that made their way up the pillars and across the roof; that was different. In an office one needed to be able to talk to somebody, if only to make the surroundings more human. Homes, verandahs, gardens were human in their feel; offices were not. An office with only one person in it was a place unfurnished.

On the other side of the wall, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni felt a similar moroseness. It was perhaps not quite as acute in his case, but it was still there, a feeling that somehow things were not complete. It was as a family might feel, he thought, if it sat down to dinner on some great occasion and had one seat unoccupied. He liked Mma Makutsi; he had always admired her determination and her courage. He would not like to cross her, of course, as she could be prickly, and he was not sure whether she handled the apprentices very well. In fact she did not; he was certain of it, but he had never quite got round to suggesting to her that she should change her tone when handling those admittedly frustrating young men. And of course Charlie was going to go too, once he had finished tinkering with that old Mercedes and the taxi licence application had been approved. The garage would not be the same without him, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni thought; there would be something missing, in spite of everything.