She was gentle. ‘You do not boil sausages, Rra. That is not how you treat a sausage. You put it in a frying pan and you fry it. Or you can put it under the grill and grill it. These are both very good things to do to a sausage.’ She paused. ‘But why don’t you let me show you, Rra? We can cook sausages together and then you will know next time.’

Charlie, half under a car, had been listening to this. ‘They’ll be offering you a job at the Grand Palm Hotel, boss. Guest chef this week: Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, formerly of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, now cooking full-time. Try his famous signature dish, everybody: sausages and baked beans. They’re talking about this new dish over in Johannesburg, Cape Town, everywhere. Talking about it, maybe, but not eating it.’

Mma Ramotswe peered under the car. ‘And you, Charlie, can you cook anything at all?’

Charlie chuckled. ‘That is women’s work, Mma. I do not want to take work from women. That would not be kind.’

Mma Ramotswe shook her finger at him playfully. ‘I shall tell Mma Makutsi that, Charlie. She will be speaking to you when she comes in tomorrow.’

She turned to Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘I shall get the sausages on the way back from Mma Potokwani’s. I am going to visit her now.’

He looked at her with interest. ‘Could you tell her something, Mma?’

‘Of course.’

‘Tell her that I’m going to be learning how to cook sausages. Please tell her that.’

‘And beans, boss,’ Charlie called out from beneath the car. ‘Don’t forget the beans.’

Mma Potokwani had spotted Mma Ramotswe’s arrival and, as her friend got out of her van to stretch her legs, she called out, ‘Well, Mma Ramotswe, this is well timed! I’ve just baked a cake, as it happens, and I wondered…’

‘Whether I would like a piece? I think I would, Mma Potokwani.’

It was an exchange they had had countless times before – one of those rituals between friends that never change very much yet never seem to grow stale. And these words, of course, were a prelude to others that had been uttered many times and yet were equally valued, as much for their familiarity as for anything else: enquiries about health; remarks about the rain, or lack of rain; observations on the state of the roads, of the country, of Africa, of the world. Among old friends the agenda can be a wide one, even if we know what they are likely to say and have heard it all before.