The Slice of No.1 Celebration Storybook: Fifteen years with Mma Ramotswe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)
Author: McCall Smith, Alexander
Date: 2013-09-05
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Rights: Copyright © 2013 by Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of over eighty books on a wide array of subjects. For many years he was Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh University and served on national and international bioethics bodies. Then in 1999 he achieved global recognition for his award-winning series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and thereafter has devoted his time to the writing of fiction, including the 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie series. His books have been translated into forty-six languages. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Elizabeth, a doctor.

By Alexander McCall Smith

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

Tears of the Giraffe

Morality for Beautiful Girls

The Kalahari Typing School for Men

The Full Cupboard of Life

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Blue Shoes and Happiness

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

The Miracle at Speedy Motors

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

The Double Comfort Safari Club

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

The Isabel Dalhousie Novels

The Sunday Philosophy Club

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

The Right Attitude to Rain

The Careful Use of Compliments

The Comfort of Saturdays

The Lost Art of Gratitude

The Charming Quirks of Others

The Forgotten Affairs of Youth

The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds

The 44 Scotland Street Series

44 Scotland Street

Espresso Tales

Love Over Scotland

The World According to Bertie

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

The Importance of Being Seven

Bertie Plays the Blues

Sunshine on Scotland Street

Bertie’s Guide to Life and Mothers

The Corduroy Mansions Series

Corduroy Mansions

The Dog Who Came in from the Cold

A Conspiracy of Friends

The von Igelfeld Entertainments

The 2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom

Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

La’s Orchestra Saves the World

COPYRIGHT

Published by Abacus

ISBN: 9781405530712

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Alexander McCall Smith

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

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www.hachette.co.uk

Contents

About the Author

By Alexander McCall Smith

Copyright

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: How It All Began

The Problem of Men

The Shape of Ladies

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: How It All Began

When I wrote the final line of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency some fifteen years ago, I thought that I was saying goodbye to Mma Ramotswe and her friends. I remember the circumstances in which I wrote that final line: in a house in a small village outside Montpelier in France. It was a summer’s afternoon, and the Mediterranean sun streaming in through the window had made the surface of my desk uncomfortably warm. I stood up and went downstairs to report to my wife and daughters that my work was over. It was not, of course: it was just beginning. A decade and a half later, I have just written the fourteenth volume in the series. My conversation with Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi and Mr J. L. B. Matekoni has been a long one indeed.

Many projects have their origin in some entirely accidental event. In the case of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, it was a lunch in Edinburgh with Professor Tom Tlou. Tom, Botswana’s most distinguished historian, and a man with a great talent for friendship, invited me to Botswana to help the university there set up a new law programme. Although I had spent a large part of the previous year working at the University of Swaziland, I was released by my own university to undertake this task. So I went to live in Botswana for a short time, unaware that this decision would eventually lead to my life’s taking a very different course from the one I had imagined. But then that is the case with so many of our decisions; we make them with no idea of how significant they may prove to be.

Over the years that followed, though I had returned to Scotland, I continued to be closely associated with the University of Botswana and I spent a great deal of time in the country. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I became increasingly attached both to the land and to the people I met there. Botswana is a remarkable country – a good place. It is a country with a good record; a country that has been consistently democratic since independence; a country that has, by and large, avoided the corruption that has had such a tragic effect on so many sub-Saharan countries. It has been fortunate, of course, in that its natural resources have provided it with a healthy economy, but its achievement is still admirable. And that is what I felt for Botswana and its people: frank admiration.

When I sat down to write The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency I did not have any particular agenda in mind other than the desire to tell the story of a woman who lived in Gaborone and had a small business. Mma Ramotswe came to me quite naturally: I had met many just like her – resourceful, intelligent women with a kind disposition, who often had to make do with comparatively little but who made the most of it. There are many such people in Botswana, and I suppose that first book and the ones that followed it are a tribute to them.

The stories in the Mma Ramotswe books are not complex mysteries. They are relatively simple tales of the difficulties encountered by very ordinary folk. They are, in a sense, fables, but they are fables set in an identifiable place that is populated by recognisable people. I am not writing social realism – I understand that there are issues in Botswana that I do not deal with in these books – but that is not what the Mma Ramotswe story is meant to be about. Her story is about how kindness and forgiveness may be placed at the centre of a life, lode stars by which we navigate our way through a world that can at times be hard and cruel. Mma Ramotswe represents generosity of spirit – and why should we not occasionally entertain ourselves with tales of how that can set to work in our daily lives? Such stories need not be heavy or didactic; they can be light and amusing, and manifest a moral complexity of their own.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books appear to have struck a chord with a rather large number of readers throughout the world. These readers come from every conceivable background; my mailbag includes letters about her from professors of literature, farmers, nurses, children, centenarians, soldiers, prisoners and prelates. I hear from those who have shared her story with dying relatives or who have had her as their companion during chemotherapy. I have heard from several psychiatrists who have prescribed her for their troubled patients; I have had more than one letter from readers who tell me that she saved them from suicide. So if Mma Ramotswe imagines that her influence is restricted to that small circle of people who wander into the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, then she is wrong indeed.

I am immensely grateful that I have been given the opportunity to tell the story of this great woman. Each year when I sit down for my annual meeting with her, I find that I do not have to ponder too long what she is going to do or say. She is simply there – seated at her desk opposite her assistant Mma Makutsi (ninety-seven per cent, remember, in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College). They are about to have tea – something they do rather a lot. And next door, in the adjoining premises of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, the love of her life, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, that great garagiste and most gracious of men, is instructing his apprentices in the proper use of spanners. Outside, the branches of an acacia tree are stirring gently in a warm wind from the Kalahari. On one of the branches there sit two Cape doves, gentle birds, watching with those tiny points of dark light that are their eyes. The doves represent love; the wind represents the movement of love; the wide African sky is the canopy under which love lies.

Alexander McCall Smith

2013

The Problem of Men

Precious Ramotswe, more generally known as Mma Ramotswe, was the founder and owner of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Botswana’s only detective agency for the solution of the problems of ladies – and of others. It was a Friday morning, and she was sitting in her office with her assistant Mma Makutsi, reflecting on a particularly challenging case in which she had been involved. Outside, the sun was high in the sky, beating down on the green canopy of the acacia trees, and the air was still. It was not a day to do very much, other than to think.

It was not that the case in question had involved any difficult enquiries; it had really been quite a simple matter. It was the emotional aspect of it all that had proved to be demanding. It was hard to break the news to a client that her husband had been unfaithful, and yet that was the result of so many investigations. And there had been that poor, nervous woman, sitting in the client’s chair, watching Mma Ramotswe with her wide eyes and receiving the tawdry details of what they had discovered. Each sentence had seemed to fall upon her like a hammer blow, and at one point Mma Ramotswe had stopped and wondered whether she shouldn’t just say: ‘Of course, we could be wrong about all this. Maybe the young woman we saw him with was a cousin or somebody like that.’ But she knew that she could not, and so she had persisted and as a result had been forced to watch the woman’s world collapse about her.

‘That was a very hard thing to do, Mma Makutsi,’ said Mma Ramotswe as they sat and drank their morning cup of redbush tea.

‘It is never easy to give that sort of news,’ agreed Mma Makutsi. ‘But then she probably knew all along that her husband was behaving badly. That was why she came to see us in the first place.’

‘She was hoping that we would set her mind at rest,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘And we have just made her unhappy.’

For a few moments nothing was said. Then Mma Ramotswe broke the silence. ‘But it is never easy for women,’ she said. ‘If you are a man, then you can behave as you like. If you are tired of one lady, you can find another. That just isn’t fair, is it, Mma?’

Mma Makutsi nodded in agreement. ‘Men think that this is the way the world should be,’ she said. ‘They think that it is right that everything should be suited to them.’

‘It is very bad,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘And women let them get away with it.’

‘But what can we do?’ asked Mma Makutsi. ‘It is not easy to change things. There is not very much we can do.’

Mma Ramotswe had to agree. Mma Makutsi was right – things were not easily changed. And yet she was not sure she shared her view that nothing could be done. She would have to think of something, because that same evening she was invited to speak to the Ladies Club of Gaborone on the subject of ‘The Problem of Men’, and she could hardly talk about a problem without offering a solution. And yet, what was one to do about men? Mma Makutsi apparently had no suggestions, and she herself was far from certain.

At home later that day, as she prepared the evening meal for Mr J. L. B. Matekoni and their two foster children Motholeli and Puso, Mma Ramotswe’s mind was on the talk that she was due to give. She now rather regretted having accepted the invitation; it would have been easy to say no, it would have been easy to claim to be too busy – and she was, was she not? There was a lot to do in the office and she had a house to run and her family to look after. It would have been perfectly proper to claim to have too much to do.

But she had agreed, and that was all there was to it. One of the things that she believed very strongly in was keeping one’s word. Her late father, that great man Mr Obed Ramotswe, had stressed to her that if you made a promise, then you had to keep it, no matter what. He had never let her down – not once – and she had never known him to let anybody else down either. That was because he believed in the old Botswana values, for which there was no substitute, no matter what modern people said.

Around the dinner table, though the children were talkative enough and though Mr J. L. B. Matekoni had something to say on the subject of a tricky car repair he had been attempting that day, Mma Ramotswe was largely silent.

‘Are you worried about something?’ asked Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘You are not saying much.’

‘I have nothing much to say,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘Perhaps I shall have more to say tomorrow, but tonight I have very little to say.’

She realised that she had not really answered his question, but she did not want to talk about her speaking engagement, even with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni.

After they had finished the meal, he stood up and announced that he and the children would wash up the dishes. Then he saw her to her tiny white van, which was parked outside, and opened the door for her.

‘You must not be nervous about speaking to these ladies,’ he said confidentially. ‘I am sure that you will speak very well. I am sure of that.’

She looked at him. ‘I do not know what to say,’ she confessed. ‘That is my problem. I do not know what to say.’

‘What is the subject of your talk?’ asked Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘Perhaps I can give you some ideas.’

She thought quickly. How could she tell him that she was talking about the problem of men? No man would understand what that was about; indeed Mr J. L. B. Matekoni might feel that he was part of the problem.

‘It is about women’s business,’ said Mma Ramotswe lightly. ‘This Ladies Club likes to discuss all sorts of things that concern ladies.’

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni nodded. ‘So they have invited you because you are a lady detective?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

‘So that is what you are going to talk about,’ concluded Mr J.L.B Matekoni. ‘You are going to talk about how a lady goes about being a detective.’

Mma Ramotswe was silent. That was not true, but perhaps she did not need to say anything more.

‘Well,’ went on Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, ‘you will have a lot to talk about. You have a lot of experience now. You can tell them about some of your cases.’

Yes, thought Mma Ramotswe. That’s exactly what I can do. I can tell them about some of my cases and the men I have encountered. I can tell them about the bad behaviour of men. The ladies will be interested in that.

She drove the tiny white van down Zebra Drive and out onto the road that led to the technical college. The Ladies Club was meeting in a room in the college, as they were expecting a large turn-out and needed a venue larger than their usual small church hall.

‘Many of the ladies have strong views on this subject,’ the organiser had said to her. ‘There will be many ladies at your talk, Mma.’

And indeed by the time Mma Ramotswe arrived at the college, it was clear that the organiser had been right. As she stood outside the lecture room talking to the other woman, guests were still arriving. And from inside the room there emanated that hum of conversation that suggests a large crowd.

‘There are many, many people here,’ said the organiser. ‘You are our most popular speaker this year. We are very pleased that you have come to talk to us.’

‘How long would you like me to talk for?’ asked Mma Ramotswe. She had imagined that twenty minutes might be about right. That would enable her to say something and yet leave time for questions.

‘About two hours,’ said the organiser. ‘We will start at eight o’clock and you should finish by ten.’

Mma Ramotswe gasped. ‘I cannot do that,’ she said. ‘I have never spoken for two hours before. I cannot speak that long.’

‘Well, one hour then,’ said the organiser. ‘One hour will be enough.’

‘No,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘I cannot talk for one hour. I am far too busy to talk for one hour. I shall talk for half an hour.’

The organiser opened her mouth to speak but thought better of it and nodded her assent. ‘We should go in now,’ she said. ‘The ladies are waiting.’

Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath and followed her into the room. Inside, seated on folding wooden chairs, were ten rows of ladies. Many of them were engaged in conversation with those around them, but when Mma Ramotswe entered the room the hubbub died down. They looked expectantly at Mma Ramotswe. So this was the famous lady detective! So this was the founder of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency!

The organiser clapped her hands together. ‘Ladies! You are welcome to the meeting, which is going to begin right now. And we are very lucky, are we not, to have a very important speaker tonight, Precious Ramotswe. This lady is the only lady detective in Botswana, and so we are all waiting very eagerly to hear what she has to say.’

At this, several members of the audience uttered sounds of general agreement which the organiser acknowledged with a nod of her head.

‘But you have not come to hear me, ladies,’ she went on. ‘I have many things to say on the subject of tonight’s talk, but you have not come to hear my views on this issue. It is Mma Ramotswe whom you have come to hear. Is that not so?’

Again there were murmurs of agreement. ‘So in that case,’ said the organiser, ‘I shall ask Mma Ramotswe to speak to you. And the subject of her talk is an important one. It is “The Problem with Men”.’

‘No,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘It is “The Problem of Men”.’

The organiser looked at her notes and then at Mma Ramotswe. ‘It says here that it is “The Problem with Men”. But it is your talk, Mma, and I must not interfere. You can decide what your talk is to be called.’

‘“The Problem of Men”,’ said Mma Ramotswe firmly. ‘That is the title of my talk.’

‘That is fine then,’ said the organiser. ‘“The Problem of Men”. That is also an important topic. You must speak on it, Mma. The ladies did not come here to hear the two of us discussing the title. You are the one who must speak.’

‘That is true,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘That is why I am trying to speak.’

‘Then you must speak,’ said the organiser. ‘I have nothing further to say.’

‘I shall begin then,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

‘Good,’ said the organiser.

Mma Ramotswe took a step forward and placed her hands on the table which separated her from her audience. She looked out at the ladies.

‘Good evening,’ she said.

Several of the ladies returned her greeting. Others smiled, gazing at Mma Ramotswe expectantly.

‘Now,’ said Mma Ramotswe, looking over the heads of the front rows to those sitting in the back. ‘There are many ladies who wonder what is wrong with men. Ladies have been asking this question for many years and they have not yet found the answer. Sometimes there are ladies who think that they have found the answer, but when you ask them what this answer is, they cannot give it to you. That is the problem with this question. There is no answer.’

She paused. There was silence in the room, apart from some commotion in one corner, where one of the ladies had dropped a purse on the floor and was struggling to recover it from under her chair.

Mma Ramotswe considered what to say next. She had imagined that she might talk about some of her cases, ones where men had been shown to have behaved badly, but now that she came to order her thoughts, her mind was drawing a complete blank. There were so many cases of this sort that they seemed to merge into one another. There was the case of the Government Man, who was arrogant and had had to be taught a lesson of humility. There was the case of the man who had let a girl down as a young man, not much more than a boy really, and then regretted it very much later on. At least he had tried to set things right. There was the case of the man who was carrying on affairs with two ladies at the same time and had been unmasked by some clever work on the part of Mma Makutsi. All of these cases were instances of masculine bad behaviour, and surely it would be easy to tell stories on that topic.

But then she pictured the face of Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, that great mechanic, who was capable of such kindness and who that very evening had offered to do the washing up. She remembered how he had fixed her tiny white van for her even before they had become engaged to be married. She remembered the many acts of kindness that he had carried out for Mma Potokwani, the matron at the orphan farm. She remembered how he had fixed the water pump at the Orphan Farm time after time, nursing it back to health in circumstances when a lesser mechanic – and a lesser man – would have condemned it out of hand.

And then she thought of her father Obed Ramotswe, a miner who had scrimped and saved in order to build a future for her. He had taught her about the old Botswana values and told her of how he had met Seretse Khama himself, first President of Botswana and Paramount Chief. And of how he had shaken the hand of Khama when he had paid a visit to Mochudi. There was not a day, not one, when she did not think about her father and how she would love him to be able to see how well she had done and how happy she was with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni.

She returned her gaze to the audience before her. Two ladies in the front row were staring at her, and one was whispering to the other.

Mma Ramotswe began to speak again. ‘I had come here tonight to talk about all the problems that men create for women. These problems are very big, and we all know what they are. We know about the men who are violent, the men who are abusive, the men who spend all the family money on drink. We know about those.’

The audience became perfectly quiet. The women in the front row who had been whispering to one another stopped now.

‘But then,’ said Mma Ramotswe, ‘I have just been thinking about the good men I know. And there are many good men. In fact, the more I think of it, the more I realise that there may be more good men than bad men. What do you think, ladies? Are there more good men than bad men?’

For a few moments nobody spoke. Then a woman at the back stood up and said, ‘I think that there are many, many good men. And I think that even the men who do not seem so good have a good side to them, and you can find that side if you look hard enough.’

‘Yes,’ said a woman from somewhere in the middle. ‘What my sister has just said is right. There are many good men. I do not think that there is a problem with men.’

‘Or a problem of men,’ interjected Mma Ramotswe.

‘No. Nor that.’

‘So perhaps we should end the meeting on that note,’ said Mma Ramotswe, sitting down on the chair behind the table.

The organiser stood up and clapped her hands once more.

‘Ladies, this has been a very interesting evening,’ she said. ‘We have decided that we should not see men as a problem. That is a good decision to have reached, although it does not seem to have taken us a long time to reach it. In fact, we have reached it rather quickly.’ She paused. ‘But maybe we can come back to this subject on another day, and we can get another speaker.’ This last remark was accompanied by a sideways glance at Mma Ramotswe, who merely smiled.

On Monday, in the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mma Makutsi asked Mma Ramotswe how Friday’s meeting had gone.

‘Did you sort out the problem with men?’ she enquired.

‘Of men,’ corrected Mma Ramotswe. ‘No, we did not sort that out. In fact, we decided that …’ she trailed off.

‘Yes?’ asked Mma Makutsi.

‘You know, Mma Makutsi, not all men are a problem,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

Mma Makutsi stared at her employer. ‘Have you been weak, Mma? Were all those ladies weak?’

Mma Ramotswe did not say anything at first. She looked out of the window at the thorn tree behind the office. There were two grey doves on a branch of the tree, two faithful grey doves. They sat beside each other on their branch, dappled by the sun through the delicate leaves of the tree.

‘It is time for more bush tea, I think,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

The Shape of Ladies

Mma Ramotswe was sitting in her office, drinking a cup of redbush tea. It was her fourth cup of bush tea that day, but that did not matter. She could drink six or even seven cups if she wished, as bush tea contained no caffeine and was said to be rather good for you. So she was never affected by those worries which coffee drinkers had about absorbing too much caffeine, or tea drinkers had about their teeth turning brown from all the tannin in their favourite brew. Mma Makutsi, her assistant, had recently started to drink ordinary tea again, and had to watch how many cups she consumed during the day or she would have trouble in sleeping at night. And Mma Makutsi was also worried that too much tea might not help her complexion, which was a difficult one.

‘I have heard that drinks like coffee and tea may not be good for the skin,’ she had remarked to Mma Ramotswe. ‘Perhaps I should stop drinking them.’

‘I have heard that too, Mma,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘But you cannot stop everything that you like just for the sake of looking good. That is the trouble with these fashionable ladies who starve themselves in order to stay thin. What’s the point of that? Why be hungry and unhappy when you could just as easily be full of good food and happy?’

‘You are right, Mma,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘I have heard such ladies described as fashion victims. That is very sad, isn’t it?’

Mma Ramotswe nodded. ‘It is much better to be traditionally built. Traditionally built people are always happier. Have you noticed that, Mma Makutsi? Have you seen how miserable those thin people look most of the time and how contented traditionally built people look?’

Mma Makutsi gazed out of the window. Outside the office, the acacia trees looked drained of life and energy. Under the relentless hammer of the midday sun, nature seemed to be browbeaten into submission, afraid to move, torpid. On a branch of one of the trees a grey lourie, known as the go-away bird thanks to its cry, perched half-concealed by the foliage. Mma Makutsi watched the bird, and reflected: one never saw traditionally built birds; such birds, if they existed, would be unable to get off the ground to escape their predators. A traditionally built bird would not last long.

She turned to Mma Ramotswe. ‘Of course, what you say is right, Mma,’ she began. ‘But do you not think that you might be saying that because you cannot lose weight? Would you say the same thing if you were not traditionally built yourself?’

There was a silence in the room – a silence which was suddenly broken by the plaintive cry outside of the go-away bird. It was as if the bird had heard this remark and wished to refute it.

Mma Ramotswe stared at Mma Makutsi, who dropped her gaze. The younger woman had wanted to say something along these lines for some time now, whenever Mma Ramotswe started to go on about the advantages of being traditionally built, but perhaps she should not have voiced it. Mma Ramotswe was such a kind woman who was always courteous to others, and Mma Makutsi now remembered the numerous acts of kindness which she herself had been shown by her employer. The first of these had been Mma Ramotswe’s taking her on as a secretary when there was not really enough work to justify such a post – even in the case of somebody who had got ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College.

‘I’m sorry, Mma Ramotswe,’ she began, stumbling over the words in her embarrassment. ‘I did not … I did not think before I started—’

Mma Ramotswe cut her short. ‘Don’t worry, Mma. What you say is true enough, I think. Maybe I do go on a bit about the advantages of being traditionally built. But I don’t think that it’s because I couldn’t lose weight. Of course I could lose weight.’

Mma Makutsi did not intend to show surprise but her eyes widened nonetheless. ‘Could you, Mma?’ she asked. ‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Of course I could,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘If I wanted to. But I’m not sure if I want to, you see. I am not going to be intimidated into going on one of these diets. Why should I? I am happy as I am. You know that.’

Mma Makutsi smiled. ‘Oh, I know that, Mma,’ she said. ‘But, you know, it’s not only a question of happiness. It’s also a question of health.’

Mma Ramotswe took a sip of her bush tea. ‘I am very healthy,’ she said firmly. ‘And this bush tea keeps me that way.’

‘So we’ll never know whether you have the willpower or not,’ muttered Mma Makutsi, almost under her breath.

Mma Makutsi had not made this remark in order to provoke a reaction; in fact, she had more or less made it to herself. But it did not go unnoticed by Mma Ramotswe, who put her teacup down on the desk with a sudden thud.

‘If you need me to show you that, Mma,’ she said, ‘then I shall be very happy to go on a diet and settle the matter.’

‘Oh, please don’t—’ began Mma Makutsi. But her protest was waved away by Mma Ramotswe.

‘I have made up my mind, Mma Makutsi,’ she said. ‘So I suggest that we get on with some work. The matter is now closed.’

Mma Ramotswe drove home in her tiny white van, back down Tlokweng Road and into the area of town known as the Village. She drove past Mrs Moffat’s house, with its great jacaranda tree that shaded the house and half the garden. She slowed down, seeing her friend in her garden watering her vegetables, and waved. Mrs Moffat waved back, and Mma Ramotswe noticed for the first time that her friend was not at all traditionally built. What was her secret? she wondered. She seemed to enjoy cake well enough; when they met for tea there was always some cake on the table. But how many pieces did she eat? Did she ever take a second piece, or did she stop at one? She tried to remember the last time she had had tea with Mrs Moffat. They had sat out on the veranda and talked, and there had been four pieces of cake on a plate in front of them. She remembered that cake, which had been covered with a delicious lemon icing, and she could see Mrs Moffat offering her a second piece, and she remembered taking it. Then she recalled licking the icing off the tips of her fingers and being offered yet another piece. And she had accepted. Yes, she had; the memory was coming back clearly now. So that answered that: she had eaten three pieces of cake to Mrs Moffat’s single piece; Mrs Moffat was not traditionally built because she usually only ate one piece of cake. Traditionally built people ate at least three pieces.

When Mma Ramotswe arrived home, she went straight into the kitchen. It was half past five, and this was the time when she liked to sit on her veranda, a cup of tea in hand, and observe the ending of the day. On the road outside her house, which was normally quiet, there would be a few passing cars as people made their way back home. She recognised many of these cars: the large red car that belonged to the man who worked for the diamond company; the sleek black car of the woman who had a beauty salon in one of the hotels; the car that belonged to her neighbour, who had those unpleasant yellow dogs that barked at night. That last car was not a car she would like to travel in, with its windows covered in marks where the dogs had pressed their moist noses against the glass.

She watched the cars, and the passersby, people walking home on foot. There was a man whistling a tune she half-recognised; a young boy shuffling along, scuffing his shoes in the dirt at the side of the road, who glanced up and saw her through the hedge and looked away quickly, as if expecting some reproach. She smiled; she would not reprimand a young boy in public these days, at least not in Gaborone, though adults would do so quite readily in the villages. It takes a whole village to raise a child, people said, and Mma Ramotswe agreed. But things had changed in town, and people were less ready to remind children of what they should do and what they should not do. That was bad. How could children grow up knowing what to do if adults were not there to tell them? Mma Ramotswe shook her head.

Her tea finished, she stood and made her way back into the kitchen. There was a meal to be prepared now, and she opened the fridge door to take out the small parcel of beef that she had bought the previous day from the supermarket at the beginning of the Tlokweng Road. It was good Botswana beef, and the thought of it made her mouth water. This was fine, grass-fed beef, from the land that she knew so well, from cattle which might have belonged to people she knew, or their cousins, or somebody with whom she could easily establish some form of contact. For that was what Botswana was like. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody else; nobody could be a stranger, no matter how hard he tried.

She took the beef out of the packet and put it on a chopping board. The meat was tender and light red; it would make a very fine stew once she had added onions to it, and some carrots too. And then there would be some mashed potatoes, which the children, the two adopted orphans, loved to eat. Puso, the boy, especially liked potatoes prepared in that way. He would make a little hill of the potatoes and create a dam at the top, a dam filled with rich, heavy gravy. Mma Ramotswe smiled at the thought. Boys were like that – they never stopped playing. Just like men.

It was hungry work making the stew, and the smell of the meat browning in her large blackened saucepan made her stomach seem to knock at her ribs. Yes, she would enjoy the stew too, and would perhaps have two helpings – there was certainly enough for that. But then she paused. Her diet had begun, and she had told herself she would have only a very small portion of stew and no potatoes at all. It was a terrible thought. Perhaps the diet should begin tomorrow, after breakfast. Perhaps it should begin at the end of the week, once she had given herself time to get used to the idea of being hungry. Perhaps …

At the table, seated with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni and the children, Mma Ramotswe took the lid off the pot in which the stew had been brought from the kitchen. Immediately a rich, tempting smell filled the air, making Mr J. L. B. Matekoni lean forward in anticipation.

‘This smells very good,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘I have been working very hard all day and I am looking forward to this good meal you have made, Mma Ramotswe.’

Mma Ramotswe frowned at him. ‘I have been working hard all day too,’ she snapped. ‘There is not just one person in this house who works hard.’

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni looked up in surprise. It was unlike Mma Ramotswe to snap at him, and yet her response to his innocent comment had been distinctly short. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said mildly. ‘I know that you work hard, Mma Ramotswe. Everybody knows that.’

Mma Ramotswe said nothing, but concentrated on ladling out helpings of the stew and the vegetables that went with it. She gave Mr J. L. B. Matekoni a particularly large portion, and she also gave generous helpings to Puso and his sister, Motholeli. But when it came to her own turn, she served herself only a very small amount, barely enough to cover one corner of the plate.

‘Are you not hungry tonight?’ asked Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘This stew is very good, Mma Ramotswe. You should have some more.’

‘No, thank you, Rra,’ said Mma Ramotswe. She tried to make her voice sound normal, but it came out sounding irritated, as if she were cross with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni for even raising the issue. He said nothing further. Women were sometimes inexplicably moody, he had observed, and this was an example of that. And the best thing to do in such circumstances was to be completely quiet. Resistance was useless; all men knew that.

Over the next two days, though she cooked good meals for the household, Mma Ramotswe ate very little. At work when Mma Makutsi took two large doughnuts out of a greasy paper bag and offered one to her, Mma Ramotswe merely shook her head curtly.

‘Then I shall have to eat it myself,’ said Mm Makutsi, laying it carefully on a piece of scrap paper at the side of her desk. ‘I don’t mind eating two doughnuts.’

Mma Ramotswe gazed across the room at the doughnut. It was a very fine-looking doughnut, and she would dearly have loved to savour it with the cup of bush tea that was before her on the desk, but she had made the decision to go on a diet and she was determined to keep going with it. After all, this was not just a question of weight; it was a question of willpower.

After a few minutes, Mma Makutsi reached out for the second doughnut and sank her teeth into a corner of it, closing her eyes with delight as she did so. Mma Ramotswe watched, and for a moment her upper lip trembled – not enough to be seen by Mma Makutsi, had her eyes been open at the time, but enough to be felt by Mma Ramotswe herself, who struggled to control it.

‘I wish you wouldn’t sit there and eat doughnuts all day,’ she said testily. ‘It doesn’t give a very good impression to the clients. They don’t expect the people who are meant to be working on their cases to be sitting around eating doughnuts.’

Mma Makutsi opened her eyes. ‘But we have no clients at the moment,’ she said, through a mouthful of doughnut. ‘No clients at all.’ As she spoke, a few crumbs of doughnut escaped from her lips and shot forwards onto the desk. She reached for them and stuffed them back into her mouth.

It was very clear to Mma Makutsi what the problem was. The new diet of Mma Ramotswe’s was making her feel so hungry and uncomfortable that she was snapping at people for the slightest thing. And the thought occurred to her: if this was the way that Mma Ramotswe behaved when she was on the way to being thin, then one could only imagine how difficult she would be once she reached her goal. She would be impossible to work with, sitting there being short with anybody who said or did anything.

During the lunch break, when Mma Ramotswe went off shopping by herself, Mma Makutsi wandered out of the office and into the workshop of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, the business with which they shared premises. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, spanner in hand, was standing over an exposed car engine, talking to one of the apprentices. Mma Makutsi drew him aside.

‘Have you noticed how touchy Mma Ramotswe has been over the last few days?’ she asked.

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni put down the spanner on an upturned oil drum. ‘Oh yes, Mma,’ he sighed. ‘She has been very cross with the world. It is most unlike her. And she seems to have lost her appetite too.’

Mma Makutsi laughed. ‘I don’t think that she has lost her appetite,’ she said. ‘I think that her appetite is still there.’

‘Then why is she not eating?’ asked Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘Is she ill, do you think?’

‘She is dieting,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘She wants to become thin.’

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni stared at Mma Makutsi. ‘But she cannot!’ he exclaimed. ‘I did not want to marry a thin lady. I wanted a nice, plump lady. She cannot do this.’

Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. An idea was coming to her as to how she might deal with the situation, and she grasped Mr J. L. B.Matekoni’s arm as she explained to him what might be done to bring Mma Ramotswe to her senses. He listened and nodded. It seemed to him to a good plan, a clever plan – just what one might expect from an intelligent woman like Mma Makutsi, with her large round spectacles.

Once Mma Ramotswe had returned from her shopping and settled back at her desk, Mma Makutsi caught her eye across the room and addressed her.

‘I was talking to Mr J. L. B. Matekoni at lunchtime,’ she said. ‘And he told me that he is very unhappy.’

Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. ‘Why should he be unhappy?’ she asked. ‘The garage is doing well.’

‘It’s nothing to do with that,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘He’s worried that you will become thin. He knows that you are a strong-willed person and it will be easy for you to lose weight, but he does not want that to happen. He thinks that traditionally built ladies are far more beautiful.’

Mma Ramotswe looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. ‘Is that really what he thinks?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘That is what he thinks.’

Mma Ramotswe unfolded her hands. ‘Perhaps …’ she began.

She did not finish the sentence. Mma Makutsi now took out the fresh bag of doughnuts which she had sent the apprentice off to buy after her lunchtime conversation with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. She rose to her feet and brought the bag over to the other woman.

Mma Ramotswe stared into the bag.

‘Oh, well,’ she said.