“Yes. I remember.”

There was silence. Mma Ramotswe waited a few moments before she spoke. “I said to you, Mma, that you could come and speak to me. I am glad that you have come.”

The woman looked up, surprised. “Why?”

“Why am I glad that you have come?” Mma Ramotswe spread her hands. “Because that is why we're here, Mma. It is our job to help people. That is what we do.”

The woman looked uncertain and Mma Ramotswe added, gently, “We do not want your money, Mma. We help everyone. You do not need to pay.”

“Then how do you eat, Mma?” asked the woman.

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “As you can tell, Mma, I am not one who does not get enough food. We eat because there are some rich people who come to us. They pay us. Rich people can be very unhappy, you know, Mma.”

The woman did not look as if she believed this. “Rich people must be very happy, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe glanced at Mma Makutsi, who had settled herself back at her desk and was following the conversation with interest.

“What Mma Ramotswe says is true,” Mma Makutsi interjected. “We have many rich people who come into this office and sit where you are sitting, Mma, in that very chair, and cry and cry, Mma. I'm telling you. Many tears-many, many tears.”

Mma Ramotswe thought this a bit of an exaggeration but did not contradict her assistant. There were people who cried in the office-that was only to be expected when people were discussing their problems-but not all of these were rich, and they generally did not cry quite the volume of tears implied by Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe sat back in her chair. “So, Mma, you are here now and we are here too. I think this would be a good time for us to talk. You must not be afraid of talking to us.”

“We tell nobody,” chipped in Mma Makutsi. “You need not worry about that.”

The woman nodded. “I know that,” she said. “Somebody told me that you people are like priests. They said that a person can tell you anything, and you will not talk about it.”

Mma Ramotswe was patient, but in the ensuing silence she glanced discreetly at her watch. She wondered whether a priest was what this woman needed; on occasion, people came into the office simply because they needed to unburden themselves of some secret. She listened, of course, to these people and she felt that it probably helped. But often she was unable to provide the thing that they needed: forgiveness. She could point them in the right direction for that, but she could not provide it. She had a feeling that this was one of those cases.

“There is something troubling you, Mma, isn't there? Something you have done?”

The woman stared at the floor. “Something I have done?” Her voice was flat-without salience. “No, Mma. It is something I am doing.”

Mma Ramotswe said nothing. At the other side of the room she saw Mma Makutsi watching, her large glasses catching the morning light from the windows.

She probed gently. “Something you are still doing? A bad thing?”

The woman moved her head so slightly that it would have been easy to miss the acknowledgement. “I did not think about it,” she said quietly. “I did not think about it at all. It just happened.”

Mma Makutsi leaned forward at her desk. It was difficult for her, with the client's chair facing Mma Ramotswe, and she always found herself addressing the back of the client's head, as she did now. But it gave her a certain advantage, she found, to speak from behind somebody; it was like interrogating a person under a strong light. Clovis Andersen disapproved of that, of course. Never use third-degree methods, he wrote. It does not get to the truth. What was this third degree? Mma Makutsi wondered. And what were the first and second degrees? Were they worse, or in some way better?

“You did not know what you were doing, Mma?” she prompted. “Or you did not know that what you did was bad?”

Mma Ramotswe gave Mma Makutsi a discouraging look.

“Mma Makutsi is just trying to help,” she said.

The woman looked anxiously over her shoulder. “I do not know, Mma,” she said. “I am not an educated woman.”

Mma Ramotswe spoke soothingly. “That is not important, Mma. There are many people who have not had an education who are very clever people indeed. It is not their fault that they have not been to school.”

“People laugh at people like me,” said the woman. “These days, when everybody is so educated.”

“If they laugh at you, then they are fools themselves,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Big fools.” She paused. “But, Mma, you must tell me what is making you unhappy. What is this thing?”

The woman looked up and met Mma Ramotswe's gaze. “I am a lady with two husbands,” she said. “That is me.”

There was a sound from the back of the room-a form of hissing from Mma Makutsi-an exhalation, really, not a hiss of disapproval. “Two husbands,” she muttered.

The woman sighed. “I do not approve of women who have two husbands,” she said. “But now I am one myself.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. “It is against the law, you know, Mma, to get married twice. You do know that, don't you?”

The woman looked surprised. “Oh, I am not married,” she said. “These men are just boyfriends. But they are very good ones. They are like husbands. I call one my weekday husband and the other my weekend husband.”

Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. What could she do? People treated her like one of those agony aunts in the newspapers-they expected her to make their decisions for them. This woman was obviously troubled, but she did not see what she could do for her, other than advise her to give one boyfriend up. But presumably other people would have told her that, and she expected something more from her and Mma Makutsi.

“Choose,” said Mma Makutsi. “Choose one of them.”

“That is not easy,” said the woman.

Mma Makutsi laughed. “No, it never is. But you have to, Mma. You cannot have two husbands. You will be punished for that one day. One of them will find out about the other, and then you will be finished.”

This brought a sharp reprimand from Mma Ramotswe. “Mma Makutsi!” It did not help if the assistant detective said to the client that she would be finished. It was unprofessional.

“I am only telling her the truth, Mma,” Mma Makutsi protested.

Unexpectedly, the woman sided with Mma Makutsi. “Yes,” she said. “You are right, Mma. I will be finished big time-and very soon. I have a very big problem-one of the husbands has gone to work for the other in his business. It is a very small business-just three men. Now one husband-the weekend husband-says that he wants to invite the other husband to have dinner at our house. He asked me to cook for them.” She paused, watching Mma Ramotswe, who was staring at her in anticipation. “And the second husband-the one who has been invited-has now asked me to come with him to this dinner. I will be the lady cooking for that dinner, in the house of my other husband.”

“You see!” broke in Mma Makutsi. “You see where lies and cheating get you, Mma? You see!”

“Thank you, Mma Makutsi,” said Mma Ramotswe. She quickly went over possibilities in her mind. People got themselves into the most uncomfortable situations, and one could not always rescue them. She could not take on the emotional problems of all Gaborone, much as she would like to help. No, she would have to get this woman to shoulder responsibility for the fix she had created for herself. “Now, Mma, I'm very sad that you find yourself in this unhappy position. I would love to be able to solve it for you, but what can anybody do? Some problems we have to solve ourselves-and this is one of them.”

From the other side of the room came Mma Makutsi's verdict. “Yes.”

“You are going to have to speak to these men,” Mma Ramotswe continued. “That is all you can do. I cannot solve this problem for you, you know. I'm very sorry but I cannot.”