It took Mma Ramotswe a moment or two to recover. “Yes, Mma, I am all right.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Susan. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“I know,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It’s over. Think no more about it.”

Susan clasped her hands together. “It’s all…” She trailed off.

“I know, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I know how you feel.”

“It’s just that…”

They were both silent now. The heat was almost unbearable; bright, pressing, unrelenting. Time itself seemed to become languid, its passage marked by the screech of cicadas, but slowly, and almost imperceptibly, the cogs of some great solution, some machine of rescue, seemed to turn upon one another. A dam had burst; somewhere in some guarded corner, a dam had burst.

“I know you’re unhappy about something else, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe gently. “We can talk about that later, once we are out of this sun.”

“I…”

“You don’t have to say anything, Mma. You don’t have to say anything at all.” She looked at Susan, and saw the tears in her eyes. She reached out. “I can take that lady a message,” she said. “I can tell you what I think that message should say, but perhaps you can find the words yourself.”

Susan nodded. “I’ll find them,” she said.

They moved towards the shade, arm in arm, following Mma Makutsi, who had already beaten a retreat from the sun and was standing, waiting for them, under the boughs of an acacia tree.

—

THE PRESENTATION CEREMONY for the Woman of the Year Award took place two days later in the ballroom of the Sun Hotel. Both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi were in the mood for a celebration, as several important and long-running cases had recently been put to bed. The Polopetsi business had also been resolved—aided by the painful sale of almost his entire herd of cattle. Mma Makutsi had complained about getting no more than her original investment back, but was persuaded by Mma Ramotswe that this was a much better outcome than might otherwise have materialised. “He has learned his lesson,” she said. “He has learned a big lesson, Mma Makutsi.”

A satisfactory outcome had also been found for the Susan affair. Susan had abandoned her search for Rosie and had concentrated instead on the couple of friends they had unearthed from her days at Thornhill School. One of these remembered her quite well and had gone out of her way to be hospitable. The last time Mma Ramotswe saw her, Susan was smiling, and that, Mma Ramotswe thought, amounted to a success. The past, she thought, was being remembered, and forgotten, in just the right measure. It had been, though, one of the strangest cases Mma Ramotswe had been obliged to deal with, even if she felt it most clearly illustrated a series of psychological and moral truths. “Forgiveness,” she said to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Forgiveness is often the solution.”