The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

Matekoni’s lunch, as she had promised she would. She knew that he would be content with the sandwich that he would have made, but it was not just the food, it was the breaking of a promise. Of course he would understand; in her work things were always cropping up and requiring a change of plans—except for one thing: she was now on holiday.
    She considered dropping in on him to explain what had happened, but decided against it. It would not do, she felt, to turn up at the garage—which of course shared its premises with her own office—on the very first day of her holiday. It would imply that she did not trust Mma Makutsi to run things while she was away, and she did not want anybody to think that. No, she would telephone the garage when she got home and tell him then what had happened.
    But before she returned to Zebra Drive there was shopping to be done. She did not have a long list, but there were things that needed to be bought for that evening’s meal and to replace some of the ancient foods she had cleared off the pantry shelves. Desiccated coconut—something that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni loved on the rare occasions when they had a curry—was no use if it had somehow absorbed moisture and turned hard and yellow. And brown sugar, normally so useful for making the banana loaf that Puso and Motholeli so hankered after, was similarly spoiled when ants had somehow worked their way into the package and established a thriving city, like a tiny termite mound, complete with tunnels and all the public buildings that ants create for themselves.
    She parked in her usual place at Riverwalk, greeting Mma Motang, the elderly woman who was parking next to her and whom she recognised from church, the woman who always volunteered to help with tea after the service and who invariably succeeded in pouring almost more tea into the saucer than into the cup—which did not matter too much, as we all have our failings, and everyone simply poured the tea from the saucer back into the cup; and it cooled the tea too, and made it unnecessary to blow across the surface before taking a sip. That could have unfortunate consequences, as had happened when the chairman of the vestry, a solemn accountant, had inadvertently blown tea over the shirt of the Minister of Roads, who had been invited to the cathedral to give a talk entitled “Life’s Journey: Taking the Right Turnings.” The minister had made little of it, but his shirt was stained with small brown dots, and his wife, a rather sour-faced woman, had stared in a very hostile way at the chairman.
    Her elderly neighbour’s parking was not all that it might have been, and she bumped into Mma Ramotswe’s van, braked sharply and reversed, scraping the paintwork as she did so. Mma Ramotswe turned off the van’s engine and sighed. It was not the other woman’s fault—well, it was, she supposed, but not her fault in any real sense. Things like this just happened, particularly if you were a bit shaky, as Mma Motang was. And did it matter all that much if the side of your van took the occasional blow? We all took blows in this life, and if you were a van, then this was just the sort of blow that came your way.
    Mma Ramotswe got out of the van and walked round to Mma Motang. She saw that the other woman was sitting bolt upright, her hands covering her face in shame.
    “Don’t worry, Mma Motang,” she said. “We all hit other cars. I do it all the time. Almost every day.”
    Mma Motang lowered her hands. “I am very stupid, Mma. I was paying attention, but I thought I had more room.”
    “That is not your fault,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Cars are too big these days. That is why they are always bumping into things. If there is any fault, it is the fault of the people who are making all these big cars.”
    If there was comfort in this remark, it was not enough to console Mma Motang. “My husband will be very cross,” she said, shaking her head. “He will tell me that I should not be driving.