“I am certainly not a detective,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “And I do not want to be a detective. I am a mechanic.”

“You have married a detective,” said Mma Makutsi gently. “People who marry people sometimes pick up a bit about the job. Look at the President’s wife. She must know all about opening schools and signing things now.”

“But I do not expect Mma Ramotswe to fix cars,” objected Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “So she should not expect me to be a detective.”

Mma Makutsi decided not to respond to this remark. Glancing at her watch, she pointed out that they should leave, or they would arrive at a time when the tenant and his family were sitting down to their evening meal, and this would be rude. Reluctantly, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni peeled off his overalls and reached for his hat off its accustomed peg. Then the two of them set off in his truck, to make the short journey along the road that led to his house near the old Botswana Defence Force Club.

As they neared the house, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni began to slow down. Peering over the steering wheel, he remarked to Mma Makutsi, “This feels very strange, Mma. It is always strange coming back to a place where you used to live.”

Mma Makutsi nodded. It was true: she had only been back to Bobonong a few times since she had moved to Gaborone, and it had always been an unsettling experience. Everything was so familiar—that was true—but in a curious way it did not seem the same. To begin with, there was the smallness, and the shabbiness. When she had lived in Bobonong the houses seemed perfectly normal to her and the house in which her family lived had seemed quite comfortable. But looking at it with eyes that had seen Gaborone, and the large buildings there, their house had seemed mean and cramped. And as for the shabbiness, she had never noticed when she lived there how Bobonong could have done with a lick of paint, but having been in Gaborone, where things were kept so smart, it was impossible not to notice all the flaking paint and the dirt-scarred walls.