Mma Makutsi nodded. “Yes. But perhaps it’s best not to use the word thinking. Some people would imagine that thinking is free. So you should put something like: ‘For consideration of your affairs.’ That is a very useful expression. Or you might write, ‘For reviewing your affairs.’ That is even better.”

Mma Ramotswe looked thoughtful. “But what about drinking tea? Let’s say that I want to think about a case and I decide to do so over a cup of tea. Can I charge for that? Can I write: ‘For drinking tea, 50 pula’?”

Mma Makutsi laughed. “Oh really, Mma Ramotswe! No, that would not do. The client would say, ‘Why should I pay them for drinking tea?’ ”

“So what should I write?”

“If you are talking to me about it while we’re drinking tea, then you should write ‘Case conference.’ That is a good way of describing it.” She looked defiantly at Mma Ramotswe. “I am not making all this up, Mma. This is the way it’s done these days. I’m simply bringing you into the present—that’s all.”

“What was wrong with the past?” asked Mma Ramotswe. She intended the question seriously. There were too many people who took the view that the past was bad, that we should rid ourselves of all traces of it as soon as possible. But the past was not bad; some of it may have been less than perfect—there had been cruelties then that we had done well to get rid of—but there had also been plenty of good things. There had been the old Botswana ways, the courtesy and the kindness; there had been the attitude that you should find time for other people and not always be in a desperate rush; there had been the belief that you should listen to other people, should talk to them, rather than spend all your time fiddling with your electronic gadgets; there had been the view that it was a good thing to sit under a tree sometimes and look up at the sky and think about cattle or pumpkins or non-electric things like that.

But an argument of that sort would never prevail against the march of modernisation, and so Mma Ramotswe just thought these things, rather than expressed them. Nor did she put up much of a fight against the new billing system, which had all the authority of the modern behind it—and the endorsement too, it would seem, of the Botswana Secretarial College. And so her day started that morning with the making up of a bill of the new sort. For taking instructions…for writing a letter of enquiry (2.5 pages)…for attending for consultation with client (25 minutes)…It was tedious work, and by the time they were ready for mid-morning tea, Mma Ramotswe was looking forward to a break. And it was then that Fanwell came in from the garage and made his unexpected announcement.