She said nothing more, but gave Mma Ramotswe an oblique look; a look that Mma Ramotswe interpreted as a warning. But she had not understood—for all her claims to understanding dreams, Mma Makutsi had missed the point. This stranger was not threatening; this stranger, for whom Mma Makutsi said she should be prepared, was not somebody to be dreaded or guarded against. On the contrary, this stranger was a good man, a kind man, and his arrival—if he were ever to come, which was highly unlikely—was something to be welcomed, something to be celebrated. And there was something else—something that was hard to put into words. The man in the dream might have been a stranger in that she had never seen him before, but somehow she felt that she knew him. She knew him but did not know him.

She glanced at her watch again. Resolve can be weakened by time, and by talk about dreams and by heat.

“I know it’s a bit early, but I think that we should have tea now,” she said to Mma Makutsi. And Mma Makutsi, who had removed her glasses to clean them, looked up, finished her task of polishing the lenses, and said that she completely agreed.

“On a hot day,” she said, “we dream of tea.”

CHAPTER TWO

FOOD COOKED WITH LOVE TASTES BETTER

IT WAS SHORTLY after this conversation about dreams, or after the tea that followed this conversation, that an unknown car drew up outside the offices of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and parked beneath the acacia tree. Had this been followed by the emergence of a tall man similar in appearance to the one who had appeared in Mma Ramotswe’s dream, then Mma Makutsi’s belief in the prescience of dreams would have been dramatically confirmed. But this did not happen, as the person who opened the car door and stepped out—watched with bated breath by Mma Makutsi—was none other than Mma Silvia Potokwane, matron not only of the orphan farm but also, in a sense, of all she surveyed.

Mma Makutsi let her disappointment be known. “It’s nobody,” she said. “Just her.”

Mma Ramotswe, who had not been looking out of the window, now did so. “But it’s Mma Potokwane, Mma. She is not nobody.” The reproach in her voice was evident and was picked up by Mma Makutsi.

“I’m sorry, Mma,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude about Mma Potokwane. It’s just that I thought that it might be the man you saw in your dream. One never knows.”