She looked at the list of names and the addresses beside them. She shook her head over the ridiculous football nicknames, smiling, though; men will be boys, she thought, especially when it comes to sporting matters. That was when men forgot their real age and went back to being ten or whenever it was that they were at their happiest. We all have a time, thought Mma Ramotswe— a time when the world was at its most exciting for us. Usually that time is somewhere in childhood, in that faded, half-remembered land that we all once dwelled in; that time of freshness and hope. For me it was … she stopped, and thought of Mochudi and the house she had lived in as a girl. And she saw her father too, the late Obed Ramotswe, with his battered old hat that people laughed at but he loved so much. That was when I was happiest, she thought. Not that she was unhappy now—she was very happy; happy with her business, with her husband, with her tiny white … No, she was unhappy about that, but best not to think about it. Think of football instead and … Her eye moved down the list and came to Big Man Tafa. She would start there because she knew the road where he lived and also because she thought it would be a good idea to start with the goalkeeper. She remembered hearing people talking about him when they came out of the Stadium. Somebody had made a remark about his having been on the wrong side of the goal at the critical moment; not that she would have noticed that herself, but it was clearly obvious enough for somebody to remark on it—somebody who knew what he was talking about, as most people who attended football matches seemed to. There had been a lot of advice given to the players by the crowd; it had been a very well-informed crowd, Mma Ramotswe thought.

She looked across the room at Mma Makutsi. “I am going to go to speak to one of these football people,” she announced. “I have divided the names on this list, and you might like to talk to some of them too.”

Mma Makutsi barely looked up from her desk. “I do not see what is to be gained by talking to these people,” she muttered. “They only like to talk about football.”

Mma Ramotswe was surprised at the degree of grumpiness in this answer, but she was patient. “That's what we need to talk about in this case,” she said mildly. “It is about football, you know.”

Mma Makutsi pouted. “We will never find out anything from them,” she said. “We won't have the faintest idea what they are talking about, Mma. Goals and lines and tackles and things like that. What is all of that about, Mma Ramotswe? That's what I ask you. What is that all about? What is this offside business? You hear men talking about it all the time. So-and-so was offside. No, he wasn't. Yes, he was. That sort of thing. What is the difference between that sort of language and Double-Zulu, Mma? That is the question.”