It had served, and would continue to do so until it was washed away in some heavier-than-usual rainy season, and people would forget that anybody ever went that way. “That road,” observed Mma Mateleke, “goes to a place where there is a woman I know well, Rra. And why do I know this woman well? Because she has had fifteen children, can you believe it? Fifteen. And fourteen of them are still here-only one is late. That one, he ate a battery, Rra, and became late quite quickly after that. He was not right in the head.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. Was eating a battery always fatal, or did it depend on the battery? Did it matter if the battery was charged, or flat? These were the questions that popped up in his mind, but he knew that they were the questions a man would ask and a woman would not, and he should not raise them. So he confined himself to saying, “That is very sad, Mma. Even if you have sixteen children, it is still sad to lose one.”

“Fifteen,” corrected Mma Mateleke, in a rather school-marmish way. “She had fifteen, and now has fourteen. And no husband, by the way. All the children are by different fathers.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head. “That is very wrong,” he said.

“Yes,” agreed Mma Mateleke. “What happened to marriage, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?”

“I am married,” he said. “I am very much in favour of it.” He paused. He was thinking of what he had witnessed at the site of the breakdown. What was that man-Mr. Ntirang or whatever he was called-what was he doing coming down to see that Mma Mateleke was all right? He recalled what he had imagined Mma Ramotswe might have said, had he told her about Mr. Ntirang’s bad driving: That man is having an affair. Was he? Was that why he was rushing down to Lobatse, to meet his lover-none other than Mma Mateleke?

He glanced at Mma Mateleke, sitting beside him. She was an attractive woman, he decided, although an unduly talkative woman would never have appealed to him personally.