“He was a very fine man, I have been told,” said the visitor. “I met him once when I was much younger, but we had left Mochudi, you see, and we were living down in Lobatse. That is why we did not meet, you and I, even though we are cousins.”

Mma Ramotswe encouraged him to continue. She had decided that she liked this man, and she felt slightly guilty about her initial suspicions. You had to be careful, some people said; you had to be, because that was how the world had become, or so such people argued. They said that you could no longer trust people, because you did not know where other people came from, who their people were; and if you did not know that, then how could you trust them? Mma Ramotswe saw what was meant by such pronouncements, but did not agree with this cynical view. Everybody came from somewhere; everybody had their people. It was just a bit harder to find out about them these days; that was all. And that was no reason for abandoning trust.

Their visitor took a deep breath. “Your late father was the son of Boamogetswe Ramotswe, was he not? That was your grandfather, also late?”

“That was.” She had never known him, and there were no pictures of him, as was usually the case with people of that generation. Nobody knew any more how they looked, how they dressed. All that was lost now.

“And he had a sister whose name I cannot remember,” the man went on. “She married a man called Gotweng Dintwa, who worked on the railways back in the Protectorate days. He was in charge of a water tower for the steam trains.”

“I remember those towers,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They had those long canvas pipes hanging down from them, like an elephant’s trunk.”

The man laughed. “That is what they were like.” He leaned forward. “He had a daughter who married a man called Monyena. He was your father’s generation and they knew one another, not very well, but they knew one another. And then this Monyena went to Johannesburg and was thrown in jail for not having the right papers. He came back home to his wife and settled near Mochudi. That is where I come in. I am that man’s son. I am called Tati Monyena.”