The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine Read Online Free PDF

swaying twig before launching itself into the air again.
They have their work to do,
she thought.
The birds have their work to do.
    Behind and above the branches of the tree was the sky, the great, empty sky of Botswana, indifferent, as the sky always was, to the things that went on beneath it: to the sudden animal dramas of life and death that took place on the plains of the Kalahari, to the grubby conflicts of the human world, the cruelties, the plotting…
    Plotting.
She looked at Mma Makutsi. She had done everything she could for her, right from that fateful day when she had appeared and more or less barged her way into the job of secretary to the fledgling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. She had advised her, supported her, paid her when there was very little in the coffers and it had meant the curtailing of her own drawings; she had done all that, and now here she was plotting with Mr. Polopetsi of all people—although Mma Ramotswe accepted that he might be an innocent pawn—to dispatch her on some open-ended and possibly even permanent holiday; and all of this so that she, Mma Makutsi, could run the business as managing director.
    Mma Ramotswe was not a vindictive woman—anything but—yet now she felt that something had to be said, even if her words might be little more than a mild reproach. Mma Makutsi could not be allowed to get away with this; could not be permitted to imagine that her machinations had not been seen for what they so clearly were.
    “You know, Mma Makutsi,” Mma Ramotswe began. “You know, anybody who listened to all this could well say: ‘Why do they want to get her out of there?’ Such a person might listen to all this and ask herself: ‘Why are they so keen to send her off on a holiday that she does not want to take?’ And then, if such a person got round to answering that question, the reply might be: ‘Because a certain person wants to run the place and there is another lady in the way.’ But if you get that lady out of the office, then everything will be in place to go ahead with the plan to do whatever it is that you want to do. Perhaps to change everything. Perhaps to do things that the other lady would not permit. Things like that.” She paused briefly to take a breath. “What does the hyena do when the lion is away? He does all the things that hyenas would like to do but that lions will never allow. That is what he does. We all know that, Mma—we all know that.”
    She finished. She had held Mma Makutsi’s gaze throughout the speech, but now she lowered her eyes and looked instead at the floor. She still felt the other woman’s eyes upon her, though, and saw, at the edge of her field of vision, the flash of light from the large round lenses.
    Mr. Polopetsi shifted awkwardly in his chair. “Oh, I don’t know, Mma. I don’t know—”
    He was cut short by Mma Makutsi. “Mma Ramotswe,” she blurted out. “I am very, very sad that you think that. I would never, never do anything like that, Mma. I would never do that. You, who have been my mother—yes, my mother, Mma—who took me on when I was just a nothing and gave me my chance. How could I forget that, Mma? How could I ever forget that?”
    Mma Ramotswe swallowed. She looked up and saw that Mma Makutsi had removed her spectacles and was dabbing at her cheek with a handkerchief. It was not an empty gesture; it was not an affectation. Mma Makutsi was in tears. And she knew immediately, and with utter clarity, that she had been wrong.
    “I was only thinking of you, Mma,” Mma Makutsi continued, the words coming out between the sobs that now began to erupt. “I have been worried, you see, that you work all the time and never have a rest. You are always thinking of other people, Mma, and you never think of yourself. Well, you have to do that, Mma. You have to have some time to rest. You have to, Mma, or one day you will die, Mma. You will fall over like a cow and die, Mma.”
    She paused, which was the opportunity for