Mr Gefeli looked blank. ‘I do not understand,’ he began.

‘Male vanity,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘Here we have a sporting hero who is very vain. He realises that he needs glasses, but he is too vain to wear them. He does nothing, in the hope that the problem will go away. It doesn’t.’ Mma Ramotswe paused as her explanation sank in. ‘So all you have to do is to have a word with him,’ she said. ‘Persuade him to go to the optician.’

Mr Gefeli scratched his head. ‘This is a very strange outcome,’ he said. ‘I had no idea.’ He stared at Mma Ramotswe in wonderment. ‘Please tell me, Mma. How did you find this out?’

‘It was simple,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘I listened, and I looked. Something one of those apprentices said made me think. Once I had thought, I acted.’

‘What did you do?’ asked Mr Gefeli.

‘I threw a pencil at him,’ said Mma Ramotswe, ‘and he didn’t catch it.’

It took Mr Gefeli a few moments to work out what had happened. Then he realised, and his face broke into a broad smile.

‘You are a very clever lady, Mma Ramotswe,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Rra,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘And now – more tea?’

A High Wind in Nevis

Marlin House sits on top of a hill above an old port on the Caribbean island of Nevis. It was built in the late 1950s by a retired doctor, who wanted a retreat on that part of the island and who enjoyed giving parties. A celebrated American writer would come to these parties, when he was in residence at his luxurious villa further up the coast, along with other well-known and glamorous people who were passing through. The doctor was a generous host, and the maker of a legendary rum punch.

When the doctor died, his son ignored the place, and the house fell into disrepair. The thick, jungle-like vegetation that covered the hillside was meant to be kept in check by a gardener, but this gardener’s sight was bad and became steadily worse. Either he did not see the creepers that were beginning to cover the terrace, or he had given up what must have been an unequal battle. Plants grew quickly there. Then there were the high winds – ‘the breeze’ as the locals called it – which tore down trees and branches, and the rains – the warm, pelting rain that clogged the storm drains.

When the house was eventually put up for sale, it attracted the attention of a couple who happened to be motoring along the coast road in an old Volkswagen car. The man, a small, rather insignificant-looking person, was Dutch. The woman, who was taller and more powerfully built, was from Trinidad and of mixed ancestry.

They had met in a club in Miami, the Blue Cocktail, and decided to cast their lot in with each other. Marcus, the Dutchman, had spent ten years as a schoolteacher on the island of Curaçao, and wanted to stay in the Caribbean. Georgina, the Trinidadian, was undecided about returning, but she wanted to travel with Marcus. Now, rather against her will, she was falling in love again with a world that she had not very long ago left with such eagerness.