Mma Ramotswe turned the van on to the track that led from the Radiphuti gate to the house some six hundred yards into the plot. Had she given the matter more thought, the possibility might have occurred to her that this track, recently created from the virgin bush and not properly flattened by grader and steamroller, might not be in a good condition to receive the heavy rain that had fallen a few hours ago. As it was, with her mind full of residues and legacies and the questions to which such matters gave rise, she did not think about mud at all until she had already encountered it and she felt the tiny white van sinking beneath her. For a few moments she allowed the wheels to turn as they sought purchase in the glutinous mass, but then she removed her foot from the accelerator lest the van should dig itself further in, perhaps even disappear altogether as vans were said to do in quicksand. There was no point in racing the engine of a mud-engulfed vehicle; she would have to be pulled out by a stronger, four-wheel-drive vehicle – Mr J. L. B. Matekoni’s rescue truck, for example, or a friendly tractor.

She prepared to step out of the van. This was not the simple operation it normally was; as a traditionally built woman, Mma Ramotswe was accustomed to occasional issues of manoeuvrability in awkward spaces, but what greeted her now was something more daunting than that. What had been a track was now a river, a spreading delta indeed, of shimmering mud, stretching almost as far as the house itself. Here and there, tufts of grass and small shrubs made for tiny islands, but for the rest there was only a red-brown sea. She looked up at the sky. The Israelites had received help in crossing the Red Sea, she recalled, when an unseen hand had parted the waves; no such help would be forthcoming here.

She sighed again and removed her shoes. Then, holding one shoe in each hand as a tightrope walker might use weights to balance himself, she stepped into the mud.

From the veranda Mma Makutsi waved and shouted. Mma Ramotswe tried to make out what she was saying but could not hear her very well. So, taking a deep breath, she made her viscous way along the mud-locked path and into the yard. Her traditional build did not help, and she felt herself sinking deeper with every step. The mud was between her toes, and that was a strange sensation but not unpleasant.

Mma Makutsi came out to meet her. ‘Mma, I was worried,’ she said. ‘I was going to phone Phuti to come and rescue you.’

‘That would not have been necessary,’ said Mma Ramotswe, surveying her mud-covered feet and ankles. ‘There is nothing wrong with a little mud. Some people say it is very good for the skin, Mma.’