It was hard for Mma Ramotswe to respond to this. She had a sense that Dr Cronje was one of those people who did not fit in—wherever they were. They were outsiders, treated with a reserve which could easily become suspicion, and that suspicion could easily blossom into a whispering campaign of ugly rumours. But what puzzled her was why she herself should have this uneasy feeling about him, which she did. Why should she feel this discomfort in his presence when she knew next to nothing about him? It was intuition again; useful sometimes but on other occasions a doubtful benefit.

“People are like that,” she said at last. “If you come from somewhere else, they can be like that. It is not easy to be a stranger, is it?”

He looked at her as she spoke; it seemed to her that he was surprised that she should speak like this, with such frankness. “No,” he said, and then paused before he continued. “And that is what I have been all my life. All of it.”

The waitress arrived with their plates. There was stew, and a plate of vegetables for each of them.

He looked at his plate. “I shouldn’t talk like this, Mma. I have nothing to complain about, really. This is a good place.”

Mma Ramotswe lifted up her fork, and then put it down again. She reached across and laid a hand upon his wrist. He looked down at where her hand rested.

“You mustn’t be sad, Rra,” she said.

He frowned, and laid down his knife.

“I wish I could go home,” he said. “I love this country. I love it. But it’s not home for me.”

“Well you could go home,” Mma Ramotswe said. She nodded in the direction of the border, not far across a few miles of scrub bush, behind the hills. “You could go home now, couldn’t you? There’s nothing stopping you.”

“That place is not home any more,” he said. “I left it so long ago, I don’t feel at home there.”

“And this place? Here?”

“It’s where I live. But I can’t ever belong here, can I? I will never be from this place. I will never be one of these people, no matter how long I stay. I’ll always be an outsider.”

She knew what he meant. It was all very well for her, she thought; she knew exactly where she came from and where she belonged, but there were many people who did not, who had been uprooted, forced out by need or victimisation, by being simply the wrong people in the wrong place. There were many such people in Africa, and they ate a very bitter fruit; they were extra, unwanted persons, like children who are not loved.

She wanted to say something to this man, this lonely doctor, but she realised there was little comfort she could give him. Yet she could try.