Alone in the hall, she smiled to herself. She had enjoyed the class and had discovered a new talent: an ability to teach. And what was more, she had in the small cash box on her desk the first week’s fees, in carefully counted notes of the Bank of Botswana. It was a comfortable sum, and there were virtually no overheads to pay. This money was hers to dispose of, although she planned to give a small portion of it to Mma Ramotswe to cover the cost of the telephone and as a recognition of her contribution to the business. Once she had done that, she would put the balance in her savings account. The days of poverty were over.

After she had locked up, she tucked the cash box into her bag of papers and started the walk back home. She walked along an untarred back road, past small houses from which light spilled, and in which she witnessed, framed in the windows, scenes of everyday domesticity. Children sat at tables, some upright, attentive, while others stared up at the ceiling; parents ladled the evening meal into their bowls; bare lightbulbs in some rooms, coloured lamp shades in others; music drifted from kitchens, a young girl sat on the kitchen step, singing a snatch of song which Mma Makutsi remembered from her own childhood, and which made her stop for a moment, there in the shadows, and remember.

SHE DROVE down in the tiny white van, the morning sun streaming through the open window, the air warm against her skin, the grey-green trees, the browning grass, the plains stretching out on both sides of the road. The traffic was light; an occasional van, minibuses crowded and swaying on their ruined suspensions, a truck full of green-uniformed soldiers, the men calling out to any girl walking along the edge of the road, private cars speeding down to Lobatse and beyond on their unknown business. Mma Ramotswe liked the Lobatse road. Many trips in Botswana were daunting in their length, particularly the trip up to Francistown, in the north, which seemed to go on forever, along a straight ribbon of a road. Lobatse, by contrast, was little more than an hour away, and there was always just enough activity on the way to keep boredom at bay.

Roads, thought Mma Ramotswe, were a country’s showcase. How people behaved on roads told you everything you needed to know about the national character. So the Swazi roads, on which she had driven on one frightening occasion some years earlier, were fraught with danger, full of those who overtook on the wrong side and those who had a complete disregard for speed limits. Even the Swazi cattle were more foolhardy than Botswana cattle. They seemed to lurch in front of cars as if inviting collision, challenging drivers at the very last moment. All of this was because the Swazis were an ebullient, devil-may-care people. That was how they were, and that was how they drove. Batswana were more careful; they did not boast, as the Swazis tended to do, and they drove more carefully.

Of course, cattle were always a problem on the roads, even in Botswana, and there was nobody in Botswana who did not know somebody, or know of somebody who knew somebody, who had collided with a cow. This could be disastrous, and each year people were killed by cattle which were knocked into the car itself, sometimes impaling drivers on their horns. It was for this reason that Mma Ramotswe did not like to drive at night, if she could possibly avoid it, and when she had to do so, she crawled along, peering into the darkness ahead, ready to brake sharply if the black shape of a cow or a bull should suddenly emerge from the darkness.

A journey was a good time to think, and as she drove, Mma Ramotswe mulled over in her mind the possible outcomes of this rather unusual affair. The more she thought about Mr. Molefelo, the more she admired what he had done in coming to see her. Most do not bother with the really old wrongs; many forget them entirely, whether deliberately-if you can make a deliberate effort to forget-or by allowing the past to fade of its own accord. Mma Ramotswe wondered whether people have a duty to keep memories alive, and had decided that they have. Certainly the old beliefs were that those who had gone before should be remembered. There were rituals to this effect, the purpose of which was to remind you of your duties to grandparents and great-grandparents, and the parents of great-grandparents and their parents, too. If you did not remember them, then they might pine and die, not here, of course, but in those other places where the ancestors lived; somewhere over there, where you could not see. Half of Botswana thought that way, and the other half thought the church way, which held that when you died you went to heaven, if you deserved it, of course, and once you were there you were looked after by saints and angels and people like that. Some people said that there were cattle in heaven, too, which was probably true; white cattle, with sweet breath, and watery brown eyes; saintly cattle who moved slowly and allowed children, the late children, to ride on their backs. What fun for those poor children, who had never known their mothers and fathers perhaps, because they had died too young; what a consolation that they should have these gentle cattle to be their companions. Mma Ramotswe thought this, and then, for a moment, she felt tears well in her eyes. She had lost her baby, and where was she? She hoped that her baby was happy and would be waiting for her when she herself left Botswana and went to heaven. Would Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni get round to naming a wedding date before then? She hoped so, although he certainly seemed to be taking his time. Perhaps they could get married in heaven, if he left it too late. That would certainly be cheaper.

To return to Mr. Molefelo and Mma Tsolamosese. It was difficult to anticipate what Mma Tsolamosese would say when the truth was revealed to her about what had happened all those years ago. She would be angry, no doubt, and she might even talk of going to the police. Mr. Molefelo had presumably not thought of that possibility when he came to her with the request to trace Mma Tsolamosese. He had assumed that the matter could be cleared up informally, but if Mma Tsolamosese made a complaint at the local police station, then they might feel obliged to press charges. It would be surprising if they did that, after all those years, but Mma Ramotswe imagined that there was nothing in the Botswana Penal Code to prevent that happening. She had not read the Botswana Penal Code from cover to cover; in fact she had not read it at all, but it could be bought from the Government Printer for a few pula; she had seen copies lying about and had paged through one of these, but it had not been immediately obvious to her what the Code was trying to say. This was the difficulty with laws and with legal language: they used language which very few people, apart from lawyers, understood. Penal Codes, then, were all very well, but she wondered whether it might not be simpler to rely on something like the Ten Commandments, which, with a bit of modernisation, seemed to give a perfectly good set of guidelines for the conduct of one’s life, or so Mma Ramotswe thought. Everybody knew that it was particularly wrong to kill; everybody knew that it was wrong to steal; everybody knew that it was wrong to commit adultery and to covet one’s neighbour’s goods… She hesitated. No they did not. They did not know that at all, or at least not anymore. There were children, horrible, cheeky children being brought up with precisely the opposite message ringing in their ears, and that was the problem, she thought grimly. People were far too ready to abandon their husbands and wives because they had tired of them. If you woke up one day and thought that you might find somebody more exciting than the person you had, then you could walk out! Just like that! And you could take it even further, could you not, and just walk out on all sorts of people. If you decide that your parents are beginning to bore you, then just walk out! And friends, too. They could become very demanding, but all you had to do was to walk out. Where had all this come from, she wondered. It was not African, she thought, and it certainly had nothing to do with the old Botswana morality. So it must have come from somewhere else.