Now, though, Mma Makutsi paged through the magazine on her own, while from within the garage there came the sound of a car’s wheels being taken off. The sounds of wheel-nuts being thrown into an upturned hub-cap was one she recognised well, and was reassuring, in a strange way, just as the sound of the cicadas in the bush was a comforting one. The sounds that were alarming were those that came from nowhere, strange sounds that occurred at night, which might be anything.

She abandoned her magazine and reached for her tea cup, and it was at that point that she saw the envelope at the end of her desk. She had not noticed it when she came in that day, and it was not there last night, which meant that it must have been put there first thing in the morning. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had opened the garage and the office, and he must have found it slipped under a door. Sometimes customers left notes that way, when they passed by and the garage was closed. Bills were even settled like this, with the money tucked into an envelope and pushed into the office through a crack in the door. That worried Mma Makutsi, who imagined that it would be very easy for money to go missing, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni seemed unconcerned about it, and said that his customers had always paid in all sorts of ways and money had never been lost.

“One man used to pay his bills with bags of coins,” he said. “Sometimes he would drive past, throw out one of those old white Standard Bank bags, wave, and drive off. That is how he settled his bills.”

“That’s all very well,” Mma Makutsi had said. “But that would never have been recommended to us at the Botswana Secretarial College. They taught us there that the best way to pay bills was by cheque, and to ask for a receipt.”

That was undoubtedly true, and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had not cared to argue with one who had achieved the since then unequalled score of ninety-seven per cent in her final examinations at the Botswana Secretarial College. This letter, though, was plainly not a bill. As Mma Makutsi stretched across her desk to pick it up, she saw, written across the front of the envelope:To Mr Handsome, Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

She smiled. There was no means of telling who this Mr Handsome was-there were, after all, three men who worked at the garage and it could be addressed to any one of them-and this meant that she would be quite within her rights to open it.

There was a single sheet of paper inside the envelope, and Mma Makutsi unfolded this and began to read.Dear Mr Handsome, the letter began.You do not know who I am, but I have been watching out for you! You are very handsome. You have a handsome face and handsome legs. Even your neck is handsome. I hope that you will talk to me one day. I am waiting for you. There is a lot we could talk about. Your admirer.

Mma Makutsi finished reading and then folded the letter up and put it back in the envelope. People did send such notes to one another, she knew, but the senders usually made sure that the letters were picked up by those for whom they were intended. It was strange that this person, this admirer, whoever she was, should have put the letter under the door without giving any further clue as to which Mr Handsome she had in mind. Now it was up to her to decide who should get this letter. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni? No. He was not a handsome man; he was pleasant-looking in a comfortable sort of way, but he was not handsome, in that sense. And anyway, whoever it was who had left the letter had no business in sending a letter like that to an engaged man and she, Mma Makutsi, would most certainly never pass on a letter of this nature to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, even if it had been intended for him.

It was much more likely, then, that the letter was intended for the apprentices. But which one? Charlie, the older apprentice, was certainly good-looking, in a cheap sort of way she thought, but the same could probably be said of the younger one, perhaps even more so, when one considered the amount of hair gel that he seemed to rub on his head. If one were a young woman, somebody aged perhaps seventeen or eighteen, it is easy to see how one would be taken in by the looks of these young men and how one might even write a letter of this sort. So there was really no way of telling which of the young men was the intended recipient. It might be simpler, then, to throw the letter in the bin, and Mma Makutsi had almost decided to do this when the older apprentice walked into the room. He saw the envelope on the desk before her and, with a typical lack of respect for what is right, peered at the writing on the envelope.

“To Mr Handsome,” he exclaimed. “That letter must be for me!”

Mma Makutsi snorted. “You are not the only man around here. There are two others, you know. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and that friend of yours, that one with the oil on his hair. It could be for either of them.”

The apprentice stared at her uncomprehendingly. “But Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is at least forty,” he said. “How can a man of forty be called Mr Handsome?”

“Forty is not the end,” said Mma Makutsi. “People who are forty can look very good.”

“To other people who are forty maybe,” said the apprentice, “but not to the general public.”

Mma Makutsi drew in her breath, and held it. If only Mma Ramotswe had been here to listen to this; what would she have done? She certainly would not have let any of this pass. The effrontery of this young man! The sheer effrontery! Well, she would teach him a lesson, she would tell him what she thought of his vanity; she would spell it out… She stopped. A better idea had materialised; a wonderful trick that would amuse Mma Ramotswe when she told her about it.

“Call the young one in,” she said. “Tell him I want to tell him about this letter you have received. He will be impressed, I think.”

Charlie left and soon returned with the younger apprentice.

“Charlie here has received a letter,” said Mma Makutsi. “It was addressed to Mr Handsome and I shall read it out to you.”

The younger apprentice glanced at Charlie, and then looked back at Mma Makutsi. “But that could be for me,” he said petulantly. “Why should he think that such a letter is addressed to him? What about me?”

“Or Mr J.L.B. Matekoni?” asked Mma Makutsi, smiling. “What about him?”

The younger apprentice shook his head. “He is an old man,” he said. “Nobody would call him Mr Handsome. It is too late.”

“I see,” said Mma Makutsi. “Well, at least you are agreed on that. Well, let me read out the letter, and then we can decide.”

She opened the envelope again, extracted the piece of paper, and read out the contents. Then, putting the letter down on the table, she smiled at the two young men. “Now who is being described in that letter? You tell me.”

“Me,” they both said together, and then looked at one another.

“It could be either,” said Mma Makutsi. “Of course, I now remember who must have put that letter there. I have remembered something.”

“You must tell me,” said the older apprentice. “Then I can look out for this girl and talk to her.”

“I see,” said Mma Makutsi. She hesitated; this was a delicious moment. Oh, silly young men! “Yes,” she continued, “I saw a man outside the garage this morning, first thing. Yes, there was a man.”

There was complete silence. “A man?” said the younger apprentice eventually. “Not a girl?”

“It was for him, I think,” said the older apprentice, gesturing at the younger one. And the younger one, his mouth open, was for a few moments unable to talk.

“It was not for me,” he said at last. “I do not think so.”

“Then I think that we should throw the letter into the bin, where it belongs,” said Mma Makutsi. “Anonymous letters should always be ignored. The best place for them is the bin.”

Nothing more was said. The apprentices returned to their work and Mma Makutsi sat at her desk and smiled. It was a wicked thing to have done, but she could not resist it. After all, one could not be good all the time, and occasional fun at the expense of another was harmless. She had told no lies, strictly speaking; she had seen a man walking away from the garage, but she had recognised him as one who did occasionally take a shortcut that way. The real sender of the letter was obviously some young girl who had been dared to write it by her friends. It was a piece of adolescent nonsense which everybody would soon forget about. And perhaps the boys had been taught some sort of lesson, about vanity certainly, but also, in an indirect way, about tolerance of the feelings of others, who might be a bit different from oneself. She doubted if they had learned the latter lesson, but it was there, she thought, visible if one bothered to think hard enough about it.