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

will I know what is yours?”
    “I do not have many things, Mma. You can leave them.”
    “If that is what you want.”
    He nodded. “I am frightened of that lady, Mma.”
    “Of course you are. But you need not be, now that I am with you. I am going to tell her that you are going. That is all. I am not going to talk to her about it—I am simply going to tell her.”
    She nosed the van into the short driveway of the house. There was a well-placed acacia tree that provided a wide circle of shade, and she parked under this. As she did so, the boy slipped off the seat beside her, to crouch in the footwell of the van. She patted him on the back and smiled. “You will be all right, Samuel. You will be safe there.”
    She got out of the van and walked up to the front door of the house. There was a gauze fly screen in its top panel, but this had been ripped and not repaired. She knocked and called out, “
Ko, ko!
”
    Somewhere within the house there was stirring.
    “Who is that?”
    Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. “I have come to see you, Mma. It is important. I have something for you.”
    In Mma Ramotswe’s experience, that always worked. If you told people that you had something for them, then they always responded quickly. Now, from deep within the house, there came the sound of footsteps.
    A woman of about Mma Ramotswe’s age appeared. She was stocky, but much lighter than Mma Ramotswe, and she was wearing a faded pink dress and bright orange shoes. Mma Ramotswe’s eyes ran down her to the shoes. She thought,
Even Mma Makutsi would think these shoes are too much…
    “Yes, Mma?” said the woman. “What is it you have for me?”
    “I have something for you,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But maybe it is best for you to invite me in.”
    Not to invite a visitor to enter was a grave discourtesy, but it did not surprise Mma Ramotswe at all.
    “Of course,” said the woman. “I am forgetting my manners, Mma. You must come in.”
    The other woman’s tone had become unctuous.
She wants whatever it is I have,
thought Mma Ramotswe;
that is why.
    They entered the living room. It was untidy, and shabby too. Against one wall stood a stained and greasy sofa on which a number of magazines had been strewn. There was an empty beer bottle on the low table and an ashtray full of
stompies,
the stubbed-out ends of cigarettes. There was the stale smell of lingering tobacco smoke, mingled with cooking odours of an indeterminate nature.
    Mma Ramotswe went right to the point. “There is a boy called Samuel. I have just met him.”
    The woman’s reply was sneering. “Yes, there is that boy,” she said. “So what? I am looking after him because his mother is late.”
    Mma Ramotswe frowned. “She is not late. She is down in Lobatse.”
    The woman seemed genuinely surprised. “Oh no, Mma. That woman is late. She died last year.”
    Mma Ramotswe thought quickly. “But Samuel said to me that she is living down there. He said that…Well, I’m afraid that he said she was a prostitute. I don’t think he understood.”
    The woman laughed. It was a crude, rather raucous laugh. “Yes, she was a prostitute. And that is why she died, you see. I have not told that boy that his mother is late. Why should he know? He will be unhappy if he learns that, don’t you think?”
    For a short while Mma Ramotswe was speechless. But then she recovered and said, “I am very sorry to hear that his mother is late.”
    “Well, many people die, Mma,” said the woman. “He is lucky that I am here to look after him.”
    It was too much for Mma Ramotswe to bear. “You are not looking after him, Mma. You are using him as a thief—as
your
thief. That is what you are doing.”
    This elicited a sharp response. “How dare you say that, Mma! You come in here and you say things like that to me…in my own house. You watch your tongue, fat lady. You just watch your tongue.”
    “But my tongue has some more things to say, Mma. I am taking that boy away from