“You can ask me,” said Mma Ramotswe, “and I shall say yes.” The words came out almost without having been thought about, but she knew that she was bound by them.

Mma Mateleke, who had been sitting with shoulders hunched in tension, now relaxed. “Please will you find this evidence that I need. Please will you find who is this woman he is having an affair with. Her name. Where she lives. What she looks like. It will not be hard for you.”

Mma Ramotswe had to acknowledge that it would not. It was difficult to conceal an affair in Gaborone, as there were not all that many places to go, and where there were a thousand eyes and ears. If Herbert Mateleke was seeing somebody else, then she would find out quite quickly. There was something, though, that was still troubling her, and she now raised this with her friend. “May I ask you, Mma, what you intend to do with the information, once you have it? I always ask clients that—it is not just you.”

This inquiry seemed to take Mma Mateleke by surprise; it was as if the answer were so obvious that the question need not have been asked. “It is so that I can divorce him,” she said abruptly. “Why else would I want to know?”

Several other reasons crossed Mma Ramotswe’s mind, but she did not reveal them. So that you might forgive him, she thought. So that you might plead with the other woman not to break up your marriage, and might succeed. So that you might reflect on why he feels it necessary to have an extramarital affair in the first place.

“Very well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I will look into this. I don’t think that it will take long. And …” She hesitated.

“And what, Mma?”

“And it may be that Herbert is innocent,” she said. “After all, some men are, you know.”

CHAPTER TEN

SOME PEOPLE JUST SIT IN THEIR CARS

MMA RAMOTSWE was in a thoughtful mood when she returned to the office. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni—and Mma Potokwane too, for that matter—had occasionally said that she had a soft heart and that “no” was not one of the words that her heart understood. She had laughed at the appraisal; in her view, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was every bit as soft-hearted as she was—he would never turn anybody away, and would fix even the most mechanically hopeless cars—and as for Mma Potokwane, well, everybody knew that she would do anything for those orphans she looked after, and if that was not a sign of a soft heart, then what was? So although she knew that she should have declined to help Mma Mateleke, she also knew that she could not refuse her friend. But she did not relish the task that lay ahead of her, as it would involve watching somebody she knew, and that was not a good idea.