“Particularly for traditionally built people,” said Mma Makutsi. “What if somebody like Mma Ramotswe sat in one of those chairs? She could fall right down.”

Phuti agreed. “I would not like to see Mma Ramotswe sitting on one of those chairs,” he said. “She is safer in the chair that she has, even if it is very old. Sometimes old things are best. An old chair and an old bed. They can be very good.”

Mma Makutsi did not welcome this mention of beds. Her embarrassment over the bed she had ruined by leaving it out in the rain had not entirely disappeared, and she felt the back of her neck become warm even to think about it.

“Chairs,” she said quickly. “Yes, old chairs can be very comfortable. Although I do not think that the chair I have in the office is very comfortable. It gives me a sore back at the end of the day, I'm afraid. It is not the same shape as I am, you see.”

Phuti frowned. “You are a very nice shape, Grace. I have always said that. It is the chair that is wrong.”

The compliment was appreciated, and she smiled at her fiancé. “Thank you, Phuti. Yes, the chair is very old. It has been there since the very beginning, when we had that old office over near Kgale Hill.”

“Then I must give you a new one,” said Phuti firmly. “I will bring one round to the office tomorrow. We have a whole new section for office furniture in the shop, and there are many fine-looking chairs. I will bring you a good one.”

She thanked him, but then thought: What about Mma Ramotswe? What would she feel if she saw her assistant getting a new chair while she was stuck with her old one? She could always raise this issue with Phuti Radiphuti, but if she did so he might feel that she was being greedy: one did not accept a present with one hand and at the same time hold out the other on behalf of somebody else. Thank you, Rra, for the nice chair you have given me, and now how about one for my friend, Mma Ramotswe? That would not do.

While Mma Makutsi wrestled with this question of etiquette, Phuti Radiphuti was clearly warming to the subject of chairs. It was always like that when he talked about furniture, she thought-his eyes lit up. And he did enjoy talking about furniture, in the same way as so many men talked about football. That was a good thing: if one had to choose between marrying a man who talked about furniture and one who talked about football, then there was no doubt in Mma Makutsi's mind as to which she preferred. There was so little one could say about football without repeating oneself, whereas there were a lot of things to be said about furniture, or at least some things.

“What colour?” asked Phuti. “What colour would you like your chair to be?”

Mma Makutsi was surprised by the question. She had always assumed that office chairs were black, or possibly sometimes grey: her chair at the office was somewhere in between these two colours-it was difficult to tell now, with all the use it had seen.

“Do you have green?” she asked. “I have always wanted a green chair.”

“There is certainly green,” said Phuti. “There is a very good chair that comes in green.”

It was now time for second helpings of pineapple and custard. Then, with the dessert cleared away and the tea cups set out at the ready, Mma Makutsi put on the kettle while Phuti sat back in his chair with the air of a man replete.

“And something else happened at the shop today,” he announced. “Something else that I think you will be interested to hear about.”

Mma Makutsi reached for the tea caddy, an ancient round tin on which the word Mafeking had been printed underneath a picture of a street and a line of parked cars. “You have had a busy day,” she said.

“Yes,” said Phuti. “And this other thing that happened has something to do with our being busy. We have taken on a new person.”

Mma Makutsi ladled tea into the teapot. One spoon for each mouth, she muttered, and one for the pot. “So what will he do, this new person?” she asked.

“She,” corrected Phuti. “She will be assistant manager in charge of beds. We have decided to start selling beds again, and we need somebody who can sell beds. It has to be the right sort of person.”

“And what sort of person is that?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Phuti appeared to be momentarily embarrassed. “A glamorous person,” he said, smiling apologetically. “Everybody in the furniture business says the same thing: if you want to sell expensive beds, get a very beautiful lady to do it for you.”

Mma Makutsi laughed. “That is why advertisements for cars always have a picture of a beautiful girl,” she said. “It is so easy to see what they are trying to do.”

“I think you are right,” said Phuti. “So we advertised a sales post and we had thirty people applying for it, Mma. Thirty. There must be many people who would like to sell beds.”

“Lazy people, perhaps,” said Mma Makutsi. “Lazy people will like to sell beds; people who are not lazy will like to sell running shoes.”

Phuti absorbed this insight. It was probably correct, he thought.

“But one of them was very good,” he continued. “She is a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College. Eighty per cent in the final examinations.”

Mma Makutsi hesitated, her hand poised above the kettle. Somewhere, in the distant reaches of her mind, unease made its presence felt.

“Eighty per cent?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Phuti. “And she had very good references too.”

“And her name?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Phuti spoke evenly, obviously unaware of the explosive potential of the information he was about to reveal. “Violet Sephotho,” he said. “I believe that you know her. She said that she had been at the Botswana Secretarial College with you. She said that you had been good friends.”

Mma Makutsi found it difficult to pour the boiling water into the teapot. Her right hand, normally so steady, was shaking now, and she had to use her other hand to come to its assistance. Violet Sephotho! Eighty per cent!

She succeeded in filling the teapot but only at the cost of several small spillages of hot water, one of which was upon her wrist, and stung.

“You have spilled hot water?”

She brushed the incident aside. “Nothing. I am fine.” But she was thinking. Eighty per cent? That was a lie, of course, as Violet had rarely achieved much more than fifty per cent in any of the examinations at the college. Indeed, Mma Makutsi could remember an occasion when Violet had not attended one of the examinations and had pleaded ill health, even producing, in class the next day, what purported to be a doctor's letter to back up her claim. “Anyone can write a letter,” one of Mma Makutsi's friends had whispered, loud enough for Violet Sephotho to hear and spin round to glare at her accusers. She had stared at the wrong person, at Mma Makutsi, and at that moment an abiding hostility, fuelled by envy, had begun.

Mma Makutsi already knew the answer to her question and so did not really need to ask it. But she had to. “You took her then?” she said. “That Violet Seph…” She could not bring herself to utter the name in its entirety, and her voice trailed away.

“Of course,” said Phuti. He looked surprised that she could have thought any other outcome was possible. Eighty per cent might not have been ninety-seven per cent, but it was still eighty per cent.

“I see.”

She looked away. Should she tell him? “I am not sure that she got eighty per cent,” she said. She tried to make her voice sound even, but it did not, and she thought that he would be able to tell that something was wrong.

“But she did,” said Phuti. “She told me. Eighty per cent.”

Mma Makutsi wanted to say, “But she is a liar, Phuti! Can you not tell? She is a very big liar.” She could not say that, though, because Phuti was a fair-minded man and would ask, even if mildly, for proof, which would be difficult to furnish. So instead she said, “Why do you think she wants to work in the shop? If she is so highly qualified, why does she not want to get a job in some big firm? A job with the diamond company, for instance?”