You must be thinking: What has this man got to complain about? He has a fashionable wife and a clever son. He has got a butchery of his own. Why complain? And I understand why one might think that, but that does not make me any more unhappy. Every night I wake up and think the same thought. Every day when I come back from work and find that my wife is not yet home, and I wait until ten or eleven o’clock before she returns, the anxiety gnaws away at my stomach like a hungry animal. Because, you see, Bomma, the truth of the matter is that I think my wife is seeing another man. I know that there are many husbands who say that, and they are imagining things, and I hope that I am just the same—just imagining—but I cannot have any peace until I know whether what I fear is true.

WHEN MR Letsenyane Badule eventually left, driving off in his rather battered Mercedes-Benz, Mma Ramotswe looked at Mma Makutsi and smiled.

“Very simple,” she said. “I think this is a very simple case, Mma Makutsi. You should be able to handle this case yourself with no trouble.”

Mma Makutsi went back to her own desk, smoothing out the fabric of her smart blue dress. “Thank you, Mma. I shall do my best.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Yes,” she went on. “A simple case of a man with a bored wife. It is a very old story. I read in a magazine that it is the sort of story that French people like to read. There is a story about a French lady called Mma Bovary, who was just like this, a very famous story. She was a lady who lived in the country and who did not like to be married to the same, dull man.”

“It is better to be married to a dull man,” said Mma Makutsi. “This Mma Bovary was very foolish. Dull men are very good husbands. They are always loyal and they never run away with other women. You are very lucky to be engaged to a …”

She stopped. She had not intended it, and yet it was too late now. She did not consider Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to be dull; he was reliable, and he was a mechanic, and he would be an utterly satisfactory husband. That is what she had meant; she did not mean to suggest that he was actually dull.

Mma Ramotswe stared at her. “To a what?” she said. “I am very lucky to be engaged to a what?”

Mma Makutsi looked down at her shoes. She felt hot and confused. The shoes, her best pair, the pair with the three glittering buttons stitched across the top, stared back at her, as shoes always do.