Mma Ramotswe twirled the pencil round in her fingers. HB: medium-soft lead. It was the sort of pencil that tended to become blunt rather too quickly for her liking. Twirling a pencil, HB or otherwise, was helpful: it enabled one to do something while one was thinking.

“So you do not know who they are?” she mused. “I suppose that can happen. If you have a very large family there must be cousins you don’t know about. I think I might have such cousins somewhere.”

“Usually such relatives turn up when they need something,” ventured Mma Makutsi. “Since I became engaged, Mma Sebina, I have found cousins who are very friendly. It is strange that they have not been friendly before, but now they must have realised that they wanted to be friendly all along.”

Mma Ramotswe decided that this would need a word of explanation. “Mma Makutsi has recently become engaged to Mr. Phuti Radiphuti,” she said. “He is—”

“The owner of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop,” supplied Mma Sebina. “I have seen him.”

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi exchanged glances. If it had been disconcerting for Mma Ramotswe to discover that Mma Sebina knew all about her, then it was now Mma Makutsi’s turn to be surprised. But it was not discomfort that she felt, but a certain degree of pride that she was engaged to a man of position, and known to people, to strangers, as such. There were those who might laugh at Phuti’s name, or indeed at the man himself; but he was a well-known businessman, and that counted for something.

“That is him,” she said. “That is our store.”