She nodded. ‘That is a very good thing to want. I think you are quite modern enough, but even if that were not true, I think that you are something even better than that. You are a kind husband, Rra. That is the most important thing, I think. A husband may be very modern, but not kind. That is no good.’

He looked embarrassed. ‘I actually went on a course,’ he said. ‘It was for husbands.’

Mma Ramotswe smiled. ‘I know about that course, Rra. Everybody has been talking about it. But I didn’t know you were going.’

‘It was very… very…’ He searched for the word. ‘Frightening. It was frightening, Mma.’

‘You don’t have to go, Rra,’ she said.

‘No?’

‘No. Not if you don’t want to.’

‘Then maybe I won’t go any more. I will still try to be more modern, though.’

He sat down while she attended to the cooking of the potatoes. She poured him a beer from the fridge and they talked of what had happened to each of them that day. There was much to discuss. There was the story of the snake and Phuti’s aunt. There was the account of the meeting with Mma Manchwe, an enemy who was not an enemy. There were the comments that the teachers had made and the songs that the choirs had sung. For his part, there were events at the garage: a gearbox restored, a braking system replaced, an invoice issued and a bill paid in full.

She sought his views on Mma Manchwe. Could she be lying? Mma Ramotswe wondered.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She is innocent.’

‘Why, Rra?’

‘Because, in general, people are, Mma, unless there is good reason to suspect otherwise. Only in books and films are they not, Mma. In real life it is different, I think.’

The children ate first, so then, because the business of the potatoes had made it run late, husband and wife ate dinner alone. After they had finished, they went out into the garden as it was hot in the house and they wanted fresh air.

There was a wind coming up. They felt it on their skin; it was cooler than the air it replaced, and it bore on it the smell that they had been longing for so intensely – the smell of rain.

‘It will be here soon,’ he said. ‘Later tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning.’

The rain came the following morning. The cool breeze of the previous evening had dropped away and the night had become almost unbearably hot as the humidity built up. By breakfast time both Mr J. L. B. Matekoni and Mma Ramotswe felt quite exhausted, although the day was just beginning.

‘I think we should buy a bigger fridge,’ said Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘Then you and I could sit in it, Mma Ramotswe. We could sit in it and drink iced tea all day.’