Vain looked thoughtful. “Probably. Or should I say, possibly.” He paused. “Do you think that the world looks bigger to a very small person? I’m not talking about children here; I’m talking about those people who never grow because they are just meant to be small. There is one such person who goes to the dance competitions. He dances with a very tall lady, although she has to bend down to hold him. People love it.”

“People can be cruel,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“Oh, they are not being cruel,” said Vain. “They are just laughing.”

“He may not see it that way, Rra.”

Vain shrugged. “He may not see it at all, Mma. Down there, he doesn’t see very much, I think.”

“I don’t think he sees the world any differently from any of us,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We all see it the same way, I think—after we have stopped being children.”

She wondered whether she, a traditionally built person, saw the world differently from the way in which a thin person might see it. She thought not.

She glanced at Susan. “Are you pleased you’ve been able to see this house?” she asked.

It was a rather direct question, and one she realised that perhaps she should not ask in the presence of a third person, but she wanted to move the conversation on from Vain’s wandering reflections.

Susan insisted she was pleased. “It has been very interesting,” she said. “It is helping me remember.”

Then Vain suddenly said, “But remember to forget. Don’t forget to forget.”

Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Mma Susan has come to Botswana to remember—not to forget.”

“I was just saying,” muttered Vain. “Sometimes we need to forget as well as remember.”

Mma Ramotswe looked into her teacup. The tea he had served was lukewarm; was Vain one of these men who could not even boil a kettle? They existed; they were fewer and further between, she thought, but they still existed. And then it came to her, as the solution of cases often did, in a moment of sudden insight. Susan had come to Botswana to get over that failed love affair back in Canada. It seemed so clear now: she had come to Botswana because she was unhappy, and unhappy people often go away because it is painful to be where they are. This was not about childhood; this was not about Botswana. This was about love and the unrepaired, sometimes irreparable, wounds that love could inflict. So when Vain—of all people—had said something about the need to forget, he had inadvertently given exactly the advice that was needed. She would have to say this to her—gently, of course, and at the right moment, which was not now.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THESE PEOPLE ARE VERY CUNNING