“That is different,” the apprentice retorted. “He is in the papers because he is going to do a parachute jump.”

“But you could do that,” said Mma Ramotswe, as if the idea had just occurred. “If you were to jump out of an aeroplane you would be all over the papers and the glamorous girls would notice all right. They would be all over you. I know how these girls think.”

“But …” began the apprentice.

He did not finish. “Oh yes they would,” Mma Ramotswe went on. “There is nothing—nothing—that they like more than bravery. If you jumped out of the plane—maybe instead of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who is possibly too old to do that these days—then you would be the one who would get all the attention. I guarantee it. Those girls would be waiting for you. You could take your pick. You could choose the one with the biggest car.”

“If she had the biggest car then she would also have the biggest bottom,” said the apprentice, smiling. “She would need a big car to fit her bottom in. Such a girl would be very nice.”

Mma Ramotswe would normally not have let such a remark pass without a sharp retort, but this was not the occasion, and she simply smiled. “It seems simple to me,” she said. “You do the jump. You get the girl. It’s perfectly safe.”

The apprentice thought for a moment. “But what about that Botswana Defence Force man? The one whose parachute didn’t open. What about him?”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “You are wrong there, Charlie. His parachute would have opened if he had pulled the cord. You yourself said to Mma Makutsi that that man had probably gone to sleep. There was nothing wrong with his parachute, you see. You are much cleverer than that man. You will not forget to pull the cord.”

The apprentice thought for a moment. “And you think that the papers will write about me?”

“Of course they will,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I shall get Mma Potokwane to talk to them again. She is always giving them stories about the orphan farm. She will tell them to put a big photograph of you on the front page. That will certainly be read by the sort of girl we are talking about.”