“But of course not,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am your wife, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. A wife does not leave her husband.” She paused. That was not true. Some wives had to leave their husbands, and she had done precisely that when she had broken up with her first husband, Note Mokoti. But that was different. “Of course I would never leave you,” she went on. “I have no interest in other men. None at all.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni opened his eyes. “None?”

“No. Only you. You are the one. There is no man like you, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. There is no man who is as good, as kind.” She stopped and reached out to take his hand. “That is well known, by the way.”

He could not meet her gaze. He felt so ashamed of himself; but he was also touched by what she had said—for a man might easily imagine himself unloved—and he did not think it was untrue. But there was still that photograph.

He rose to his feet, gently pushing away her hand, and went across the room to pick up the small canvas bag which he sometimes took with him to the garage. He took out an envelope and felt within it for the photograph.

“There is this,” he said. “There is this photograph. It was in the camera. That office camera.”

He pushed the photograph over the table towards her. Frowning, she picked it up and examined it. She looked puzzled at first—he was watching her expression closely, with anxiety, with dread—but then she smiled. Her smile struck him as callous, hurtful; that she should smile at, make light of such a thing as this. He felt doubly betrayed.

“I had forgotten about that,” she said. “But now I remember. Mma Makutsi took it shortly after we had bought the camera. It was taken outside the shop where we bought it. You know that place, just outside the Mall. Look, there is that bit of wall at the back.”

He glanced at where she was pointing. “And that man?”

“I have no idea who he was,” she said.

His voice was barely a whisper. “You do not even know his name?”

“No. And I don’t know hers either.”

“Whose?”

“Hers. The woman in the picture. The woman who looks like me. Or so Mma Makutsi told me. They ran that shop, you see, those two people. And Mma Makutsi whispered to me while we were buying the camera, Look, Mma, that lady is your double. And I suppose she did look a bit like me, and when we mentioned it, they thought so too. They laughed, and so we decided to try the camera out. We took that photograph, and forgot about it.”