In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith

sort of name that might well be held by the leader of a knitting circle or a Sunday School teacher. Of course, it could have been much worse, and she could have been burdened with one of those names which children then spend the rest of their days in living down. At least she was not called, as one of the teachers at the Botswana Secretarial College had been called, a name which, when translated from Setswana, meant: This one makes a lot of noise. That was not a good name to give a child, but her parents still did it.
    Now this well-named Fano Fanope was proposing to offer dancing classes (with other skills included) every Friday night. These would take place in a room at the President Hotel, and there would be a small band provided. The advertisement also revealed that instruction would be given in a wide range of ballroom
    dances, and that Fano Fanope, who had achieved recognition
    in dancing circles in four countries, would personally instruct all those who registered for the class. It would be wise not to wait, the advertisement went on, as there were many people who were keen to improve their social skills in this way and demand would be high.
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    Mma Makutsi read the advertisement with close interest. There was no doubt in her mind that it would be good to be able to do some of those obscure dances that she had read about—the tango, for one, looked interesting—and there was also no doubt that dancing classes were a good place to meet people. She met people at work, of course, and there were her new neighbours, who were perfectly friendly, but she was looking forward to a rather different sort of meeting. She wanted to meet people who had been places, people who could talk about fascinating things, people whose lives encompassed rather more than the daily round of work and home and children.
    And there was no reason why she should not enter into such a world, thought Mma Makutsi. After all, she was an independent
    woman with a position. She was an assistant detective at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency; she had her own small business in the shape of the part-time Kalahari Typing School for Men; and she had a new house, or part of a house, in a good area of town. She had something behind her now, and it did not matter if she wore very large round glasses and had a difficult complexion;
    it was her turn to enjoy life a bit more.
    She prepared for the evening with care. Mma Makutsi did not have many dresses, but there was one, at least, a red dress with a line of small bows along the hem, that would be ideal for a dancing class. She took this dress out of the cupboard and ironed it carefully. Then she showered, under cold water, as there was no hot water in the house, and spent some time in the other tasks of making herself ready to go out. There was nail varnish to be applied, a very fine pink one that she had bought at ridiculous expense the previous week; there was lipstick; there was powder; there was something to put on her hair. All this took the best part of an hour, and then she had to walk off to the end of the road to catch the minibus into town.
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    “You’re looking smart, Mma,” said an older woman in the crowded vehicle. “You must be meeting a man tonight. Be careful!
    Men are dangerous.”
    Mma Makutsi smiled. “I am going to a dancing class. It is the first time that I have gone to it.”
    The woman laughed. “Oh, there will be plenty of men at a dancing class,” she said, offering Mma Makutsi a peppermint from a small bag she had extracted from a pocket. “That’s why men go to dancing classes. They go to meet pretty girls like you.”
    Mma Makutsi said nothing, but as she sucked on the peppermint
    she thought about the prospect of meeting a man. She had not been strictly honest with herself, and she was prepared to admit it, even if only to herself. She would like to learn to dance, and she would like to meet interesting people in general, but what she really wanted to do was to meet an interesting