Yes, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni; like the rest of us. I am a mechanic; that is what I am; I am not something else. I suppose I have my ways which annoy other people—my keeping those engine parts in the spare room, for instance—that annoys Mma Ramotswe. And I do not always wash out the bath after I have used it; I try to remember, but sometimes I forget, or I am in a hurry. Things like that. But we all have some things we are ashamed of.

He looked at Mma Ramotswe. One of the things he was ashamed of was thinking that she could ever take up with another man, that she would leave him. He had tried to put those ideas out of his head because he knew that they were both unfounded and unfair. Mma Ramotswe would never deceive him—he knew that—and yet somewhere in the back of his mind those unsettling thoughts lurked, nagging, insistent. And then there had been that photograph. He had tried not to think about it, but he found that he just could not help it; try not to think of something and see how hard it is, he thought. There was Mma Ramotswe with another man, and the man had his arm about her. The camera had recorded it and he had found it. How could he not think about that?

Mma Ramotswe was buttering a piece of bread. She cut the bread into two pieces and popped one of them into her mouth. When she looked up from her task, she saw that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was staring at her, with that look that he sometimes had, a slightly sad, confused look. She swallowed; a crumb tickled. “Is there something wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head, in false denial, and turned away, embarrassed. “No, nothing is wrong.” But then he thought, But there is something wrong. There is.

He closed his eyes. He had decided to say something because he could not keep this within him any longer. But he was unable to look at her while he spoke. “Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “Would you ever leave me?”

She had not anticipated anything like that. “Leave you?” she asked incredulously. “Leave you, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni?” And oddly, inconsequentially, she thought: Leave you to go where? To Francistown? To Mochudi? Into the Kalahari?

He kept his eyes closed. “Yes. For another man.”

He opened his eyes slightly, just to catch a glimpse of the effect of his words. What he had said surprised even himself, and he wondered what effect it would have on Mma Ramotswe.