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

little, or even none. Sometimes, in the case of this last group, you know in your heart, and straightaway, what you must do.
    “Where is this place, Samuel? I want to see this lady.”
    He seemed unwilling. “She will be very cross with me, Mma, if I take you there.”
    I’m sure she will,
thought Mma Ramotswe. She leaned forward so that she was looking directly into his face. He stared at her, eyes wide. “Listen to me, Samuel,” she said. “I am going to take you away from that lady. She is very bad. I am going to take you to another lady who is kind-kind. She will not beat you. She will give you a place in a room that is very clean. There will be other children who will be your brothers and your sisters.”
    She paused. She was not sure that he was taking it in. And she wondered, too, whether she could commit Mma Potokwane in this way. It was all very well making such an offer, but did she know that there was a place in the children’s home, or would there be a waiting list? Everything, it seemed to Mma Ramotswe, had a waiting list—except the government taxman and the call, when it came, to leave this world. You could not argue with the agents of either of these: you paid, and you went.
But I am just on the waiting list…
No, there is no waiting list for these things…
    Samuel was mute.
    “I am telling you, Samuel,” she continued. “There is a good place for you. I shall take you there, in this van, straightaway after we have seen this bad lady.”
    He gasped. “But you must not call her that, Mma. She is not a bad lady. She will beat you.”
    Mma Ramotswe tried not to laugh. “Will she?” she asked. “I do not think she should try, Samuel. It is I who will beat her if she tries anything. I am a traditionally built lady, you know, and if there are any bad people who try to push me around—or to beat me—then I can sit on them very quickly. And if I do that, then they cannot breathe—all the air goes out of their lungs and they cry out, ‘I am not fighting any more, Mma.’ ”
    He looked at her with astonishment, but she realised that she had won for him whatever battle he had been fighting within. She decided to press home. “So, that is all fixed up, then. You tell me where this place is and we shall go and fetch your things. Then we shall go to this other place.”
    She looked at her watch. She should be back at home preparing Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s lunch, but he would assume that she had been delayed and he would make himself a sandwich. He enjoyed any excuse to make himself a sandwich that would always have too much of everything in it—too much salad cream, too much cheese, too much ham (if there was any in the house), and too much butter. She called it his “Too-Much Sandwich,” but he laughed at this and said that when you worked under cars all day a “Too-Much Sandwich” was justified, even if it was far from healthy.
    “It is over that way,” he said, pointing to a small road that ran off in the direction of Extension Two. “It is not far away.”
    —
    THE HOUSE had once been a good one—one of the larger bungalows built by the government in the late nineteen-sixties for an employee of one of its departments, and then sold on to its occupant. It would have been lived in by tenants, ending up by some circuitous route in the hands of the woman who now owned it. It had not been properly maintained, and she saw at once that the yard was ill kempt, which spoke volumes, as it always did. If you did not keep your yard in reasonable order, then your whole life would be similarly untidy. A messy yard told Mma Ramotswe everything she needed to know about its owner.
    She could tell that the boy was anxious, and she sought to reassure him. “You can stay in the van, if you like,” she said. “You do not have to get out.”
    He looked grateful. “Can I hide, Mma? Can I hide down below the seat?”
    “Of course you can. You do not need to see this lady. But what about your things? How