Mma Makutsi was silent. It had never occurred to her that decisions of this nature would be made on any other basis. Everything that she had been taught at school had conveyed the message that hard work helped you to get a good job.

“Well,” said her friend, smiling wryly, “I can tell that you do think that. And you’re wrong. Men choose women for jobs on the basis of their looks. They choose the beautiful ones and give them jobs. To the others, they say: We are very sorry. All the jobs have gone. We are very sorry. There is a world recession, and in a world recession there are only enough jobs for beautiful girls. That is the effect of a world recession. It is all economics.”

Mma Makutsi had listened in astonishment. But she knew, even as the bitter remarks were uttered, that they were true. Perhaps she had known all along, at a subconscious level, and had simply not faced up to the fact. Good-looking women got what they wanted and women like her, who were perhaps not so elegant as the others, were left with nothing.

That evening she looked in the mirror. She had tried to do something about her hair, but had failed. She had applied hair-straightener and had pulled and tugged at it, but it had remained completely uncooperative. And her skin, too, had resisted the creams that she had applied to it, with the result that her complexion was far darker than that of almost every other girl at the college. She felt a flush of resentment at her fate. It was hopeless. Even with those large round glasses she had bought herself, at such crippling expense, she could not disguise the fact that she was a dark girl in a world where light-coloured girls with heavily applied red lipstick had everything at their disposal. That was the ultimate, inescapable truth that no amount of wishful thinking, no amount of expensive creams and lotions, could change. The fun in this life, the good jobs, the rich husbands, were not a matter of merit and hard work, but were a matter of brute, unshifting biology.

Mma Makutsi stood before the mirror and cried. She had worked and worked for her 97 percent at the Botswana Secretarial College, but she might as well have spent her time having fun and going out with boys, for all the good that it had done her. Would there be a job at all, or would she stay at home helping her mother to wash and iron her younger brothers’ khaki pants?