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Chapters (25)
  1. Cover Page
  2. TITLE PAGE
  3. DEDICATION
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  15. CHAPTER TWELVE
  16. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  17. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  19. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  21. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  22. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  23. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  24. BOOKS BY ALEXANDER MC CALL SMITH
  25. COPYRIGHT

The snap decision, so confident and decisive, was reversed, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni waited while the first of the two red cars swung out into the main road and drove off. At five o’clock on this road there was a fair bit of traffic to contend with, as people, anxious to return home, drove off to Gaborone West and onto the Lobatse Road, and to other places they lived; all of them going about their legitimate business, of course, unlike the second driver, who seemed to be hesitating. He had started his engine—a mechanic could tell that at a glance, even from that distance—but he was not moving for some reason. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni wondered why he should be waiting, and decided that this was a yet further indication of guilt: he was waiting until the driver of the other red car was well on his way, as he did not want that first driver to see him, the second driver, setting off in the wrong direction. That was clearly what was happening. Again, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was astonished at the way in which these conclusions came to mind. It seemed to him that once one started to think about a problem like this, everything all fitted into place surprisingly neatly, like one of those puzzles one saw in the papers where all the numbers added up or the missing letters made sense. He had not tried his hand at those, but perhaps he should. He had read somewhere that if you used your mind like that, then you kept it in good order for a longer period of time, and you put off the day when you would be sitting in the sun, like some of the very old people, not exactly sure which day of the week it was and wondering why the world no longer made the sense that it once did. Yet such people were often happy, he reminded himself, possibly because it did not really matter what day of the week it was anyway. And if they remembered nothing of the recent past but still held on to memories of twenty years ago, then that too might not be as bad as people might think. For many of us, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, twenty years ago was a rather nice time. The world slipped away from us as we got older—of course it did—but perhaps we should not hold on too tightly.