Violet Sephotho felt none of this loyalty. She had taken up her place at the college because nothing else had turned up. Her examination results at school were indifferent, and had she applied to the University of Botswana she would have been summarily rejected. She might have secured a place on a vocational course, perhaps being able to train as a nursing auxiliary in a clinic or as a hospitality assistant in the hotel trades school, but both of these involved commitment and willingness to work, which she simply did not have. For Violet, the Botswana Secretarial College was distinctly beneath her dignity—it was a place more suited to dim provincial nobodies like Grace Makutsi than to the likes of her. The college lecturers were, in her view, a sad bunch—people who had obviously not found real jobs in commerce or industry and who were content to spend their time drumming useless information into the heads of young women who would never be more than the second-rate occupants of dead-end jobs.

Mma Makutsi had been scandalised by Violet’s behaviour. She found it hard to believe that anybody could so blatantly paint her nails during accountancy lectures, blowing ostentatiously on her handiwork to dry it more rapidly even while the lecturer was explaining the principles of double-entry book-keeping. Nor could she believe that anybody would keep up a running conversation with like-minded companions, discussing the merits of various men, while no less a person than the vice-principal of the college tried to demonstrate how a properly devised system of filing could save a lot of trouble and anxiety in the future.

Violet eventually graduated on the same day as Mma Makutsi, but while the latter covered herself in glory and was singled out by the principal herself in her address, Violet scraped past with a bare fifty per cent, the lowest pass mark possible, and only awarded, everybody suspected, because the college authorities could not face the prospect of Violet repeating the course and being on their books for another six months.

In the years that followed, Violet Sephotho lost no opportunity to put down or decry Mma Makutsi. And when Mma Makutsi was taken on by the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, she transferred her venom to Mma Ramotswe and the agency in general.

“The so-called No. 1 so-called Ladies’ so-called Detective Agency,” Violet publicly sneered. “No. 1 Disaster, more likely, with that Grace—I call her Graceless!—Makutsi from somewhere up in the sticks. Bobonong, I believe—what a place! And that stupid fat lady who calls herself Precious but is really just a big waste of space, thinking she can solve people’s problems! Far better go to a decent witch doctor and get him to sell you some powder than take your issues to that dump! Boring! Big time!”