“He needs a godmother,” said Mr. Polopetsi. “He had a godmother, and now she is late. He needs a new one.”

There was only one answer Mma Ramotswe could give. “Yes,” she said. “I will do that, Rra.”

There would be birthdays from now on, as well as shoes and school fees and so forth. But we cannot always choose whose lives will become entangled with our own; these things happen to us, come to us uninvited, and Mma Ramotswe understood that well. And just as she had not chosen Mr. Polopetsi’s son, she reflected, so too had the boy not chosen her.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

RESIGNATION SHOES

MMA MAKUTSI was eager for a report the next day. She would have preferred to have gone to Mochudi in the place of Mr. Polopetsi, who she thought would not have been likely to add very much to the investigation. But she was cautious about giving offence to Mma Ramotswe after the misunderstandings of the previous day, and she kept those feelings to herself. In fact, she went further than that and told Mma Ramotswe what a good idea it had been to take Mr. Polopetsi. “If you’re a woman, sometimes people don’t take you seriously enough,” she said. “That is when it is useful to have a man around.”

Mma Ramotswe was non-committal about that. Men were learning, she thought, and a great deal had changed. Mma Makutsi, perhaps, was fighting battles which had already been largely won, at least in the towns. It was different in the villages, of course, where men still thought that they could do what they liked. But she was thinking of other things: she had been pondering Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s planned investigation and was wondering whether she could discreetly suggest that Mma Makutsi assist him. She could try that, certainly, but she was not sure whether he would welcome it; in fact, she was sure that he would not. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni might not be the most assertive of men, but there were sensitivities there that surfaced from time to time.

“Be that as it may,” she said to Mma Makutsi, as they began to attend to the morning mail. “There was not very much that we could find out at the hospital. I saw the ward where it happened. I spoke to the nurses, who said almost nothing. And that was it.”

Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. “And what can you do now?” she asked.

It was difficult for Mma Ramotswe to answer that. She very rarely gave up on a case, as solutions had a habit of cropping up as long as one was patient. But it was difficult at any particular point to say what would happen next. “I shall wait,” she said. “There is no special hurry, Mma. I shall wait and see what happens.”