The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

always taken a rather condescending attitude towards Mma Ramotswe’s own shoes, which were designed for comfort rather than for fashion. They were always the same: flat and brown, and fairly wide too, to cater to traditionally built feet. But they had never let her down and, unlike Mma Makutsi’s shoes, had never been sarcastic.
    ‘You know something, Mma?’ Mma Ramotswe said to Mmakosi. ‘Mma Makutsi’s shoes are very unusual. They…’ She stopped herself. She had been about to mention that Mma Makutsi’s shoes appeared to speak, but she realised that this would sound very odd to the shopkeeper.
    ‘Yes, Mma?’ prompted Mmakosi.
    ‘They are a very unusual colour. And so I think she will like these red shoes.’
    The purchase made, Mma Ramotswe went out into the covered square. The managers of the shopping centre had thoughtfully provided concrete benches for the comfort of tired shoppers, and for those who might not have been tired out by shopping but were tired at the thought of shopping. A few of these people now sat about on these benches, plastic bags of purchases resting at their feet, in some cases watching passers-by, in others looking vaguely into the distance, and in yet others half dozing in the drowsy warmth of the afternoon. A small group of four or five teenagers had congregated around one bench and were chatting about the things which teenagers liked to chat about and which adults, for all their efforts, singularly failed to understand. There was laughter and raised voices from this group, sufficient to attract a scowl of disapproval from a middle-aged man on a nearby bench. But Mma Ramotswe did not disapprove. Laughter, even teenage laughter, was something of which she would never disapprove, unless, of course, it was cruel laughter, which was always so easy to recognise from its higher pitch and sharper edge.
    Mma Ramotswe decided to sit down. She was not particularly tired – it was simply one of those occasions when she felt like sitting down. There was no reason why one should always be on the move. That was half the trouble with the world, she thought: not enough people took the time to sit down for a few minutes and look up at the sky or at whatever it was that was before you – a herd of cattle, perhaps, or a stretch of bush dotted with acacia trees, or the sinking of the evening sun into the Kalahari. You did not have to sit for long; even a few minutes was enough to remind you that if you spent your life rushing about, then the years would slip through your fingers without your really noticing it until suddenly they were gone and you were old and before long it would be that moment that comes to everybody – the time to leave Botswana for ever.
    A morbid notion, and Mma Ramotswe was not given to such things, so as she lowered herself on to the bench, the gift parcel on her lap, she turned her mind to something else altogether: the Sheba case. Although she had not started her actual investigation, she had been thinking about it, and thinking about a problem – even in a rather dreamy way – was often a good way of allowing the mind to come up with possibilities. What puzzled her about this case was that if anybody was lying, it would be the aunt: she was the one on whose word the whole matter rested. If Mma Sheba was right and Liso was not the real Liso, then there had to be a reason for the aunt to go along with that deception. Would she have an interest in stopping the real Liso from inheriting the farm? Would it be because he might evict her from her house? That was possible. Or did she want this other young man to inherit it because she could control him in some way? Perhaps she wanted to buy the farm at a knockdown price and had a secret agreement with him to sell it to her if she lied about his identity in order to enable him to inherit. Unlikely, she thought. Very unlikely.
    Her chain of thought was diverted when she looked up and saw two workmen struggling with several large