“I hear what you say, Mma,” Mma Ramotswe began. “Your husband. I did not mean …”

“It has been going on for many years,” Mma Tsau interrupted her. “Just after we were married—even then, he started this thing. I told him how stupid he looked, running after these young girls, but he ignored me. I told him that I would leave him, but he just laughed and said that I should do that. But I could not, Mma. I could not …”

This was a familiar story to Mma Ramotswe. She had come across so many women who could not leave unworthy men because they loved them. This was quite different from those cases where women could not leave because they were frightened of the man, or because they had no place to go; some women could not leave simply because, in spite of everything that had been done to them, in spite of all the heartbreak, they stubbornly loved the man. This, she suspected, was what was happening here. Mma Tsau loved Rra Tsau, and would do so to the end.

“You love him, Mma?” she probed gently. “Is that it?”

Mma Tsau looked down at her hands. Mma Ramotswe noticed that one of them had a light dusting of flour on it; the hand of a cook.

“Eee,” said Mma Tsau, under her breath, using the familiar, long-drawn-out Setswana word of assent. “Eee, Mma. I love that man. That is true. I am a weak woman, I know. But I love him.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. There was no cure for such love. That was the most basic thing one found out about human affairs, and one did not have to be a private detective to know that simple fact. Such love, the tenacious love of a parent or a devoted spouse, could fade—and did—but it took a long time to do so and often persisted in the face of all the evidence that it was squandered on an unworthy choice.

“I was going to say that I hadn’t come about that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I do not know your husband.”

It took Mma Tsau a few moments to take in what Mma Ramotswe had told her. When she did, she turned to look at her. She was still defeated.

“What have you come about?” she asked. There was no real curiosity in her voice now. It was as if Mma Ramotswe had come about the supply of eggs, or potatoes perhaps.

“I have come because I have heard that you have threatened to dismiss one of your staff,” she said. She did not want to suggest that Poppy had complained, and so she said, quite truthfully—in the strictest sense—that nobody had asked her to come. That was not a lie. It was more what Clovis Andersen called an indirect statement; and there was a distinction.

Mma Tsau shrugged. “I am the head cook,” she said. “I am called the catering manager. That is who I am. I take on some staff—and push some staff out. Some people are not good workers.” She dusted her hands lightly, and for a moment Mma Ramotswe saw the tiny grains of flour, like specks of dust, caught in a slant of sunlight.