Read Online The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith - Free Book Online

also from the emotion that she had felt when he had taken her hand and held it tightly. That, she felt, could only be a wordless affirmation of the fact that nothing had changed.
    “A word of warning,” said the doctor as he took Mma Makutsi aside. “He won’t necessarily have taken in what has happened to him. Sometimes it’s not until quite a bit later that a person in his position comes to terms with the loss of a limb. You have to be ready for that.”
    This warning, sobering though it was, had not succeeded in dampening Mma Makutsi’s pleasure at the operation’s success. She had seized upon such positive words as the doctor had uttered: there had been enough skin for a very good flap; the compromised tissue was relatively low down the leg—just a coupleof handbreadths above the ankle; a temporary prosthetic device could be fitted in a month or so and then they could get just the right artificial leg later on; his vascular system was fundamentally healthy, and there should be no reason why there should be any complications. There was a lot to be relieved about.
    Later on that night, though, in the quiet, sleepless hours, doubts returned. The aunt had implied that everything would be different now that Phuti had lost a leg—but why? The posing of the question brought a range of possible answers. Phuti had never been particularly confident. This might destroy his confidence altogether, and if that happened then he might not wish to marry. He might become depressed, as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had been, and Mma Makutsi knew what depression could do to a person’s ability to make even the smallest decision, let alone a decision about a wedding date. And finally there was the aunt with the watermelon-shaped head; she had now shown her hand, and could be counted on to use all her wiles—and Mma Makutsi imagined that these might be considerable—to prise Phuti away from her and take him back into the fold of his family. There were all sorts of unpleasant possibilities, and in the small hours of the morning these loomed larger and larger.
    By Saturday morning, Mma Ramotswe had heard of the operation’s success. She too had been going over various possibilities; in particular she had been thinking of the threat posed by the aunt. Mma Ramotswe had gone out of her way to reassure her, but when the other woman had simply brushed her off she realised that this was one of those people with whom there simply could be no dealing. They were few and far between, thankfully, but when you encountered one of them it was best just to recognise what you were up against, rather than to hope for some miraculous change of mind, some Road to Damascus improvement.
    At least Phuti was alive and well, by all reports firmly embarked on the road to recovery, and Mma Ramotswe could get on with the day’s activities without too much brooding and anxiety. Saturday was her favourite day of the week, and usually followed the same set pattern. There would be shopping to do at the Riverside Pick and Pay, one of the highlights of the week with important decisions to be made about vegetables and cuts of meat. The children liked to accompany her on these outings; she had to watch them carefully, or the shopping trolley would be filled with garishly packaged boiled sweets and chocolate, all carefully tucked under healthier produce.
    “If you really want your teeth to drop out,” Mma Ramotswe scolded, “then buy lots of those things. But if you still want to be able to chew anything when you’re thirty, don’t.”
    She realised, though, that such a threat meant nothing to them, particularly to Puso, for whom the idea of being thirty was inconceivable. Motholeli was a bit more prudent—she had seen how a world could draw in—but her younger brother, not yet ten, felt himself immortal. That would change, of course, but traces of that attitude, she thought, lasted well into adult life, and had to. The realisation of our mortality came slowly, in dribs