He slipped the ignition key into the truck. No, he said to himself; you are jumping to conclusions. You have no evidence of the unfaithfulness of Mma Ramotswe; all you have is a photograph, a single photograph. And everything you know about Mma Ramotswe and her character, everything you know of her loyalty and her honesty, suggests that these conclusions are simply unfair. It was inconceivable that Mma Ramotswe would have an affair; quite inconceivable, and he should not entertain even the merest suspicion along those lines.

He laughed out loud. He sat alone in his truck and laughed at his stupidity. He remembered what Dr Moffat had told him about his illness—how a person suffering from depression could get strange ideas—delusions—about what he had done, or what others were doing. Although he was better now, and was no longer required to take his pills, he had been warned that there could be a recurrence of such thinking, of irrational feelings, and he should be on the look-out for them. Perhaps that was what had happened—he had merely had a passing idea of that nature and had allowed it to flower. I must be rational, he told himself. I am married to a loyal, good woman, who would never take a lover, who would never let me down. I am safe; safe in the security of her affection.

And yet, and yet…who was in that photograph?

WITH A SUPREME EFFORT, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni put out of his mind all thoughts of that troubling photograph and concentrated on the photograph of Mma Baleseng and the house. He had been to see Mma Botumile at her own house, a large old bungalow just off Nyerere Drive. It was an expensive part of town, one in which the houses had been built shortly after Gaborone had been identified as the capital of the newly independent country of Botswana. The plots of land here were of a generous size, and the houses had the rambling comfort of the period, with their large rectangular rooms, and their wide eaves to keep the sun away from the windows. It was only later, when architects began to impose their ideas of clean-cut building lines, that windows had been left exposed to the sun, a bad mistake in a country like Botswana. In the Botumile house there was shade, and there were whirring fans, even now at the tail end of winter, and red-polished stone floors that were cool underfoot.

Mma Botumile received him on the verandah of the house, in a spot that looked out directly onto a spreading jacaranda tree and an area of crazy-paving. She did not rise to greet him as he was shown in by the maid, but continued with a telephone call that she was making. He looked up at the ceiling, and then studied the pot plants; averting his eyes from the rudeness of his hostess.