Mma Ramotswe, listening intently, had allowed her bush tea to become cooler than she liked it. She preferred to drink bush tea when it was fresh from the pot, piping hot, and this cup, now, was lukewarm. Boitelo’s story was a familiar one, at least in that it followed a pattern which she had come across so often. Things started well for somebody and then, and then … well, then a path was crossed with a person who would change everything. That had happened to her, with her former husband, Note Mokoti, the jazz player and ladies’ man who had, for a brief period, transformed her world from one of happiness and optimism to one of suffering and fear. Such people—men like Note—went through life spreading unhappiness about them like weedkiller, killing the flowers, the things that grew in the lives of others, wilting them with their scorn and spite.

As a young woman she had been too naïve to see evil in others. The young, Mma Ramotswe thought, believe the best of people, or don’t imagine that people they know, people of their own age, can be cruel or worthless. And then they find out, and they see what people can do, how selfish they can be, how ruthless in their dealings. The discovery can be a painful one, as it was for her, but it is one that has to be made. Of course it did not mean that one had to retreat into cynicism; of course it did not mean that. Mma Ramotswe had learned to be realistic about people, but this did not mean that one could not see some good in most people, however much that might be obscured by the bad. If one persisted, if one gave people a chance to show their better nature, and—and this was important—if one was prepared to forgive, then people could show a remarkable ability to change their ways. Except for Note Mokoti, of course. He would never change, even though she had forgiven him, that final time, when he had come to see her and asked her for money and had shown that his heart, in spite of everything, was as hard as ever.

Boitelo was looking at her. Mma Ramotswe thought that the nurse must be wondering what she was thinking. She would have no idea that the woman before her, the traditionally built detective with her cup of rapidly cooling bush tea before her, was dreaming about human nature and forgiveness and matters of that sort.

“I’m sorry, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Sometimes my mind wanders. Something you said made my mind wander. Now it is back. Now it is listening to you again.”