Mma Ramotswe sighed. “We cannot make all our clients happy, Mma. Sometimes, maybe. It depends on whether they want to know what we tell them. The truth is not always a happy thing, is it?”

Mma Makutsi picked up a pencil on her desk and idly started a sketch on a piece of paper. She found herself drawing a sky, a cloud, an emptiness, the umbrella shape of an acacia tree, a few strokes of the pencil against the white of the paper. Happiness. Why should she see these things when she thought of happiness?

“Are you happy, Mma Ramotswe?” Her pencil moved against the paper. A pot now, a cooking pot, and these were the flames, these wavy lines below. Cooking. A meal for Phuti Radiphuti, for the man who had given her that diamond, to show that he loved her, and who did; she knew that. A girl from Bobonong, with a diamond ring, and a man who had a furniture shop and a house. All that has come to me.

“I am very happy,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have a good husband. I have my house on Zebra Drive. Motholeli, Puso. I have this business. And all my friends, including you, Mma Makutsi. I am a very happy woman.”

“That is good.”

“And you, Mma. You are happy too?”

Mma Makutsi put down her pencil. She looked down at her shoes, the green shoes with sky-blue linings, and the shoes looked back at her. Come on, Boss. Don’t beat about the bush. Tell her. She felt a momentary irritation that her shoes should speak to her like this, but she knew that they were right.

“I am happy,” she said. “I am engaged to be married to Mr. Phuti Radiphuti.”

“Who is a good man,” interjected Mma Ramotswe.

“Yes, who is a good man. And I have a good job.”

That was a relief to Mma Ramotswe, who nodded enthusiastically.

“As an associate detective,” Mma Makutsi rapidly added.

Mma Ramotswe was quick to confirm this. “Yes. An associate detective.”

“So I have everything I need in this life,” concluded Mma Makutsi. “And I owe a lot of that to you, Mma. And I am thankful, really thankful.”