“Lazy people, perhaps,” said Mma Makutsi. “Lazy people will like to sell beds; people who are not lazy will like to sell running shoes.”

Phuti absorbed this insight. It was probably correct, he thought.

“But one of them was very good,” he continued. “She is a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College. Eighty per cent in the final examinations.”

Mma Makutsi hesitated, her hand poised above the kettle. Somewhere, in the distant reaches of her mind, unease made its presence felt.

“Eighty per cent?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Phuti. “And she had very good references too.”

“And her name?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Phuti spoke evenly, obviously unaware of the explosive potential of the information he was about to reveal. “Violet Sephotho,” he said. “I believe that you know her. She said that she had been at the Botswana Secretarial College with you. She said that you had been good friends.”

Mma Makutsi found it difficult to pour the boiling water into the teapot. Her right hand, normally so steady, was shaking now, and she had to use her other hand to come to its assistance. Violet Sephotho! Eighty per cent!

She succeeded in filling the teapot but only at the cost of several small spillages of hot water, one of which was upon her wrist, and stung.

“You have spilled hot water?”

She brushed the incident aside. “Nothing. I am fine.” But she was thinking. Eighty per cent? That was a lie, of course, as Violet had rarely achieved much more than fifty per cent in any of the examinations at the college. Indeed, Mma Makutsi could remember an occasion when Violet had not attended one of the examinations and had pleaded ill health, even producing, in class the next day, what purported to be a doctor's letter to back up her claim. “Anyone can write a letter,” one of Mma Makutsi's friends had whispered, loud enough for Violet Sephotho to hear and spin round to glare at her accusers. She had stared at the wrong person, at Mma Makutsi, and at that moment an abiding hostility, fuelled by envy, had begun.

Mma Makutsi already knew the answer to her question and so did not really need to ask it. But she had to. “You took her then?” she said. “That Violet Seph …” She could not bring herself to utter the name in its entirety, and her voice trailed away.

“Of course,” said Phuti. He looked surprised that she could have thought any other outcome was possible. Eighty per cent might not have been ninety-seven per cent, but it was still eighty per cent.

“I see.”

She looked away. Should she tell him? “I am not sure that she got eighty per cent,” she said. She tried to make her voice sound even, but it did not, and she thought that he would be able to tell that something was wrong.

“But she did,” said Phuti. “She told me. Eighty per cent.”

Mma Makutsi wanted to say, “But she is a liar, Phuti! Can you not tell? She is a very big liar.” She could not say that, though, because Phuti was a fair-minded man and would ask, even if mildly, for proof, which would be difficult to furnish. So instead she said, “Why do you think she wants to work in the shop? If she is so highly qualified, why does she not want to get a job in some big firm? A job with the diamond company, for instance?”