The storm lasted forty minutes or so, stopping even more abruptly than it had started with the sudden cessation of the rain. One moment the air was white with the dense curtains of falling water; the next the curtains had parted, revealing a transformed world. The earth and the objects upon it seemed to shine – as if polished. The shimmering heat was gone; the soil, once hard, was soft again, and breathed; the heat-exhausted leaves on the trees were revived, instantly restored to dark green by the water that had fallen upon them.

The mechanics returned to work, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni saying, ‘Well, that’s the rains arrived, but the cars are still waiting.’

And Mma Ramotswe, gathering up her keys and her notebook, said, ‘Time for us to get back to work too.’ She stopped. The others, leaving the room, did not notice, but she did. She had spoken as if Mma Makutsi were still there.

She looked at the desk that she had tidied herself when Mma Makutsi had first gone off. And she thought, I must do something. There is something I can do for her, and I must do it.

She went outside. The tiny white van had been washed by the downpour, and now stood sparkling and resplendent, as if some passing evangelist had chosen to baptise it, had sought to make it without sin. She smiled at the unexpected thought. It was the sort of thing that Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, with his tendency to speak of cars in human terms, might appreciate. He had once said cars had souls; well, perhaps he was right. Perhaps everything had a soul of sorts, which is what some people still believed – that the world all about us was endowed with life and with the very same spirit we saw within ourselves. It was only now, she thought, when we were finishing with the earth, using it up, that we were beginning to understand how right they were. Even Botswana, with all its air and its grasslands and its thorn trees and its brown-red earth, did not go on for ever.

They were big thoughts, and she knew that people had to think them. But for the moment, there was a more immediate task – the one of looking at Rra Edgar’s will. It might not tell her much that she did not already know from Mma Sheba’s account of the document, but Mma Makutsi was right in suggesting that she should look at it. Bless you, Mma Makutsi, she said to herself as she started the van and began to drive away. Bless you, and your shoes, and your baby, Itumelang Clovis Radiphuti, and that good husband of yours, and your ninety-seven per cent…

The woman who greeted her at the registry office was business-like.

‘That name, Mma,’ she said. ‘Molapo. That is a common name. There are many people who die and are called that.’