There were two main targets, Mma Ramotswe thought. First, there were fat people, who were now getting quite used to a relentless campaign against them; and then there were men. Mma Ramotswe knew that men were far from perfect—that many men were very wicked and selfish and lazy, and that they had, by and large, made rather a bad job of running Africa. But that was no reason to treat them badly, as some of these people did. There were plenty of good men about—people like Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, Sir Sereste Khama (First President of Botswana, Statesman, Paramount Chief of the Bangwato), and the late Obed Ramotswe, retired miner, expert judge of cattle, and her much-loved Daddy.

She missed the Daddy, and not a day went by, not one, that she did not think of him. Often when she awoke at this hour of the night, and lay alone in the darkness, she would search her memory to retrieve some recollection of him that had eluded her: some scrap of conversation, some gesture, some shared experience. Each memory was a precious treasure to her, fondly dwelt upon, sacramental in its significance. Obed Ramotswe, who had loved his daughter, and who had saved every rand, every cent, that he made in those cruel mines, and had built up that fine herd of cattle for her sake, had asked for nothing for himself. He did not drink, he did not smoke; he thought only of her and of what would happen to her.

If only she could erase those two awful years spent with Note Mokoti, when she knew that her Daddy had suffered so much, knowing, as he did, that Note would only make her unhappy. When she had returned to him, after Note’s departure, and he had seen, even as he had embraced her, the scar of the latest beating, he had said nothing, and had stopped her explanation in its tracks.

“You do not have to tell me about it,” he said. “We do not have to talk about it. It is over.”

She had wanted to say sorry to him—to say that she should have asked his opinion of Note before she had married him, and listened, but she felt too raw for this and he would not have wanted it.