I’m a forgiving lady, Mma Ramotswe told herself. I see no point in keeping old arguments alive when it is so simple to lay them to rest. She had made a deliberate attempt to forgive Note, and she thought that it had worked. She remembered the day on which she had done this, when she had gone for a walk in the bush and had looked up at the sky and emptied her heart of its hatred. She had forgiven him on that day: she had forgiven him the physical cruelty, the beatings which she had endured when he had taken drink; she had forgiven him the mental torment which he had inflicted on her when he had promised her something or other and had immediately torn up the promise. And when it came to the money which he had taken from her, she forgave him that too, saying to herself that she did not want it back.

When Mma Potokwane had made her disclosure about having seen Note Mokoti, Mma Ramotswe had not shown much of a reaction. Indeed, Mma Potokwane felt the news was of little importance to her friend, so uninterested did she appear, and so she said nothing more about it. They continued their conversation about Charlie and his worrying behaviour; Mma Potokwane had a great deal to say about this, and made some valuable suggestions, but later, when Mma Ramotswe tried to remember what she had said, she could recall very little. Her mind had been almost completely occupied by the sheer awfulness of the news that had been broken to her so casually. Note was back.

As she drove back from Tlokweng that day, Charlie was far from her mind. If Note Mokoti had been seen in Gaborone, then this could mean that he had returned to live there—and that raised certain very obvious difficulties—or it could mean no more than that he had come back for a visit. If he was on a visit, then he might already have gone back to Johannesburg, and she need worry no more. If, however, he had moved back to Gaborone, then it would be inevitable that she herself would see him sooner or later. The town was bigger these days, and it was possible that two people might live in it without ever seeing one another, but there was a very good chance that their paths would cross. After all, there were not all that many supermarkets and she was always bumping into people at such places. And then there was the mall, the centre of the town, where everybody went sooner or later; what if she were to be walking down the mall and she saw Note walking towards her? Would she turn round and walk in the opposite direction, or would she just walk past him as if he were any other stranger?