“Oh, I have no plans to go there again,” retorted Mma Ramotswe. “And I don’t want to see you again, either.”

Note sneered. “You’re getting a bit cheeky, aren’t you? You know what I do to cheeky women?”

Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes, but only briefly. She remembered the violence, yes, but now it seemed less frightening.

“You listen to me,” she said. “If you’ve come for money from me, the answer is that I do not have to give you a single thebe, not one. Because I was never your wife in the first place, and I owe you nothing. Nothing.”

Note moved slowly towards her. “You say you were not my wife? Why do you say that?”

“Because you were still married when you married me,” she said. “That makes you the bigamist, not me. I am not the one who could be reported to the police. You are. You were married to another girl and you had a child by her, didn’t you? I know that now.”

Note stopped in his advance. She saw his lip quiver, and she saw his fingers move in that strange way, as if he were practising the trumpet. She wondered for a moment whether he would strike her, as he had struck her before those many years ago, but decided that he would not. Behind her she could hear Mr J.L.B. Matekoni cough, and drop a spanner loudly—his way of signalling that he was at hand, that he would intervene should it be necessary. And there was Mr Polopetsi too, standing at the entrance to the garage, pretending to sweep the floor, but watching closely. Her two friends, those two good men who were so different from Note: her husband—her real husband—and that kind and helpful Mr Polopetsi were there at hand, ready to come to her aid. Note was no threat while they stood there; cruelty was a thing of shadows and hidden places, not a thing that flourished under the eyes of such men as those.

Note looked at her, a look of pure hate, and for a moment Mma Ramotswe was afraid again, but then she stopped herself and taking a deep breath, she stepped towards him. Now they were face to face, and when she spoke she did not have to speak loudly.

“I loved you,” she said, making sure that he should hear each word. “You were not good to me. Now that is all over. I do not hate you, Note Mokoti, and I am …”—she paused. It was hard to say this, but she knew that she had to. “I want you to go in peace. That is all.” And she spoke in Setswana those two simple words that mean Go in Peace, Go Slowly.