They drove back up Zebra Drive and out onto the main road. Perhaps I’m in the wrong job, Mma Ramotswe thought. What is that saying about not staying in the kitchen if you don’t like the heat? Should she give a bit more thought to that? After all, these old sayings were often right. Mind you, she said to herself, it’s not just the kitchen that’s hot—the whole country is too hot at the moment, this baking heat that wraps Botswana until suddenly the summer rains arrive and cool everything down. She might think differently then, she imagined; and Mma Makutsi might be a little less confrontational. Cool weather brings cool tempers. Was that a saying? she wondered. If it was not, then it could well become one, and she, Mma Ramotswe, would be the author of it. She might even write to Clovis Andersen and tell him about it. He would appreciate it, she thought. But then does he remember me? What am I, who is just Mma Ramotswe of Botswana, to that important man who lives so far away in Muncie, Indiana? Can I really call him my friend?

The woman in the back started to mutter.

“You don’t know anything,” she said. “You don’t know that I was like a mother to that girl. When she cried I was there; I was the one who comforted her. You don’t know that, do you? And when her little dog became sick and died I was the one who helped her bury it at the end of the garden and put the stones around its grave. I was the one who wiped away her tears. I was. And I was the one who nursed her when she was ill because the real mother was always working or playing tennis. I was the one, and you people don’t know that—and you don’t care, do you? You don’t care because all you think about is money and being paid by these people who come to see you. And having your picture in the newspapers too. That’s what you think about.”

Mma Ramotswe felt that she had to reply to this. Slowing down, she spoke into the driving mirror. “No, Mma, you are wrong. We do care. And I’m sorry if you think that we do not.”

“Can you please stop the car,” the woman said. “Stop the car and let me get out.”

Mma Ramotswe pulled over to the side of the road. With their passenger out, Mma Ramotswe turned to Mma Makutsi. “Well,” she said, “that was a bit of a mess, Mma.”

“Not at all,” said Mma Makutsi. “That woman was a fraudster, Mma.”

“Maybe,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But fraudsters can have feelings, Mma.”

“But what about the feelings of the people they defraud? Don’t you think we have to consider those?”

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But—”