She moved towards the door. For a moment or two it seemed as if Violet was about to say something, but she did not. Mma Makutsi gave her one last glance, and then left, nodding to the receptionist on her way out, as politeness dictated. Mma Ramotswe would be proud of me, she thought; Mma Ramotswe had always said that the repaying of rudeness with rudeness was the wrong thing to do as it taught the other person no lesson. And she was right about that, as she was right about so many other things. Mma Ramotswe…Mma Makutsi saw the face of her friend and heard her voice, as if she was right there, beside her. She would have laughed at Violet. She would have said of her insults, Little words, Mma, from an unhappy woman. Nothing to think twice about. Nothing.

Mma Makutsi went out into the sunshine, composed herself, and began to walk home. The sun was high now, and there was much more warmth in it. She could get a minibus most of the way, if she waited, but she decided to walk, and had gone only a short distance when the heel of her right shoe broke. The shoe now flapped uselessly, and she had to take both shoes off. At home, in Bobonong, she had often gone barefoot, and it was no great hardship now. But it had not been a good morning, that morning, and she felt miserable.

She walked on. Near the stretch of open bush that the school used for playing sports, she picked up a thorn in her right foot. It was easy to extract, but it pricked hard for such a small thing. She sat down on a stone and nursed her foot, rubbing it to relieve the pain. She looked up at the sky. If there were people up there, she did not think that they cared for people down here. There were no thorns up there, no rudeness, no broken shoes.

She rose and picked up her shoes. As she did so, a rattly old blue taxi drove past, the driver with his right arm resting casually on the sill of the window. She thought for a moment, That’s a dangerous thing to do—another car might drive too close and that would be the end of your arm.

She raised her own arm, suddenly, on impulse. The taxi stopped.

“Tlokweng Road, please,” she said. “You know that old garage? That place. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”

“I will take you there, Mma,” said the taxi driver. He was not rude. He was polite, and he made conversation with Mma Makutsi as they drove.

“Why are you going there, Mma?” he asked as they negotiated the lights at the old four-way stop.

“Because that’s where I work,” said Mma Makutsi. “I took the morning off. Now it’s time to go back.”