“That is because you’re …” Mma Makutsi stopped herself in time. She had been about to say, “That’s because you’re a man,” but then she thought that this was perhaps a bit unkind, even if it was true. You should not make people feel guilty about things that are beyond their control, and the fact that Phuti was a man was not something he could do anything about. So she completed the observation by saying instead, “… because you’re too busy thinking about so many other important things. How can you be expected to think about fridge doors when your mind is full of big decisions on things like ordering furniture, and so on and so forth?”

Phuti nodded. It was true that he had many such decisions to make, but he also felt that he should concern himself with minutiae. He called this micromanagement, and he had learned about it from a correspondence course he had taken called “Managing the Details in Retail and Related Industries.”

“Is there anything else?” he had asked. “Do you need one cooker or two?”

Mma Makutsi was unprepared for this question. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that she would be in a position to have two cookers; indeed, it was achievement enough, she felt, to have had the single-plate cooker-cum-oven that she had successfully used for the last few years. Two cookers!

“Oh, I think now that you mention it, we should perhaps have two,” she said, trying to sound as casual as possible, as if the choice between one or two cookers was a decision of little weight—the sort of decision one might easily make without giving it much thought at all.

“So you will have two cookers then,” said Phuti, proud that he was able to offer his new bride two cookers. “It is best to be prepared.”

Mma Makutsi nodded gravely. She was not sure what eventuality they were planning for; indeed, she could not think of any reason why one would need two cookers, but they were now committed to a two-cooker kitchen, and she was happy enough with that.

There were several other minor matters to be settled.

“The floor must be easy to clean,” said Phuti. “So I’ll tell Mr. Putumelo to lay special tiles that can be easily washed.”

Mma Makutsi thought this very wise. “But they must not be too slippery,” she said. “Some of these modern tiles …” She shook her head, as might one who had only too frequently been wrong-footed on unsuitable tiles. In reality, for Mma Makutsi the thought of any tiles at all was almost intoxicating in its implications; her floors, until now, had been—at best—red-painted concrete, and not all that long ago, in Bobonong, the traditional option of packed mud.