No, Mma Makutsi was not one to clutter, and she had soon built up a small pile of things that she judged ready to go. There was a box of old pencils that Mma Ramotswe had salvaged, but never used; that would not be missed. There were several promotional writing pads, given to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni by a tyre salesman, that had been ignored on a shelf and were now yellowed with age. There were various items of evidence garnered in old investigations: a tie left behind in a room and then discovered by a suspicious husband; the tie of a paramour, a thin, brightly coloured tie, that looked guilty. “A man who would wear a tie like that could do anything,” Mma Ramotswe had observed.

Mma Makutsi gathered the items together and began to look around for something to put them in. Then she saw the rain clouds, and moved over to the window to look out at them. It was the sight that everybody was waiting for; the beginnings of a rainy season, they hoped, that would bring life to the land again. Rain was what mattered in Botswana—mattered above all else.

Mma Makutsi sent up a silent prayer. This season had to be good, or the level in the great dam that held Gaborone’s water would remain perilously low. And if that happened, there would be water rationing again and people’s gardens, such as they were, would wither and give up. But her prayer was not for Gaborone, but for the north, for her people up in Bobonong, who needed the rain more desperately than she did. For them, good rains meant fat cattle and sleek goats, not to mention good yields of sorghum for the making of flour.

And then it started. There was a wind and a movement in the trees, followed by the rain. Mma Makutsi saw the first drops hit the white earth of the garage yard, throwing up what looked like tiny worms of water and sand. Then these merged into one and became a silver shimmer of rapidly growing puddles; even the thirsty earth could not absorb this sudden munificence of water. She saw Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni running through the rain to his truck, sheltering his head with an old newspaper. He had urgent business to attend to, it seemed; a car stuck in the rain somewhere? A window left open at home and suddenly remembered—

The appalling thought struck her—the new bed—and she screamed. She had left her handsome new bed in the open, stacked against the side wall of the house, and now…She gave another cry and ran to the door. The two apprentices were standing near the front of the garage, watching the downpour. One of them, Charlie, was whittling away at a small stick with his penknife when Mma Makutsi called out as she ran towards him.