Mr. Molofololo, however, was not so impressed. “Yes,” he said. “Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. But when you have a strong team like ours, then you do not expect it to be the one who will always lose, do you? We should win some games and lose others. That is the way these things work, I believe.”

Mr. Molofololo stared at Rops, as if daring him to contradict such obvious logic. But the captain merely shrugged, looked at his watch, and announced that it was time for him to go to the dressing room and marshal the team.

“Then we must go and find our seats,” said Mr. Molofololo, standing up and straightening his tie. “I shall get somebody to fetch your little boy up from the dressing room, Mma, and bring him to our seats. We are all sitting together in my special place. You will have a good view from there.”

THE GAME BEGAN. For Mma Ramotswe the first few minutes were reasonably interesting, as Mr. Molofololo gave her a running commentary on who was who and how many goals they had scored—or failed to score—over the last season. He knew each of the players intimately, she thought; in fact, it rather reminded her of the way her late father, Obed Ramotswe, had known the cattle that made up his herd. He had known the strengths of each beast—its potential to grow, its lineage, its ability to withstand drought, and so on. Mr. Molofololo was like that with his players, and she expected at any moment that he would launch into a discussion of how to breed football players, but he did not; that would perhaps be taking it a bit too far.

For the first fifteen minutes or so, it seemed to her that nothing much was happening. The Kalahari Swoopers got possession of the ball and lost it from time to time to the Township Rollers. Then they got it again, and the action switched back where it had been before they lost possession. Then everything changed again.

“How are we doing?” she asked Mr. Molofololo at one point. And he replied, “Nothing is happening yet, Mma. You must be patient. This is not like cooking.”

She wondered whether to take objection to that remark, but decided not to. It was not just that Mr. Molofololo was the client, and one should not offend clients; there was something strange about Mr. Molofololo, something that she could not quite put her finger on. He had a tendency to make remarks that were just a little bit disconcerting—as if he was thinking about something quite different, or as if he saw a dimension to an issue that you did not.

Mma Ramotswe settled into her seat and watched the match unfold. From time to time Mr. Molofololo became animated and shouted out encouragement; at other times he groaned and sank his head in his hands. And others in the audience were behaving in a similar way as the fortunes of the match flowed this way and that. It was all new to Mma Ramotswe, and she reflected on how strange it was that things like this—football matches, with all their passion and complexity—had been taking place right under her nose in Gaborone and she had known so little about them.