“And I will be in the front, driving,” he said. “The selling point will be that this is a taxi that is safe for ladies. Ladies will be able to get in without any fear that they will find some bad man in the driver’s seat—a man who might not be safe with ladies. There are such taxi drivers, Mma.”

For a minute or so nobody spoke. Mma Ramotswe was aware of the sound of Charlie’s breathing, which was shallow, from excitement. We must remember, she thought, what it is like to be young and enthusiastic, to have a plan, a dream. There was always a danger that as we went on in life we forgot about that; caution—even fear—replaced optimism and courage. When you were young, like Charlie, you believed that you could do anything, and, in some circumstances at least, you could.

Why should Charlie’s taxi firm not succeed? She remembered a conversation with her friend Bernard Ditau, who had been a bank manager. “There are so many people who could run their own businesses,” he had said, “but they let people tell them it won’t work. So they give up before they start.”

Bernard had encouraged her to start the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency when others had merely laughed and said that it would be the quickest way of losing the money that Obed Ramotswe had left her. “He worked all those years, your Daddy, and now you’re going to lose everything he got in two or three months,” somebody had said. That remark had almost persuaded her to drop the idea, but Bernard had urged her on. “What if he hadn’t bought all those good fat cattle?” he asked. “What if he had been too timid to do that and had left the money to sit gathering dust?”

Now she was sitting, in a sense, in Bernard’s place. There was little doubt but that Mma Makutsi would be only too ready to throw cold water over Charlie’s plan, but she decided that she would not do this.

“I will tell all my friends to use your taxi,” she said. “I am sure you will be very busy.”

Charlie beamed with pleasure. “I will give them a discount,” he said. “Ten per cent off for anybody who knows Mma Ramotswe.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “That is very kind of you,” she said. “But that is not the way to run a business. You will need every pula you can make.”

“If you make any, that is,” muttered Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe threw a disapproving glance in Mma Makutsi’s direction. “I am sure he will,” she said. “I am sure of that.”