Taken aback, Mma Makutsi made an attempt to defend herself. “But there’s my career to think about,” she protested. “What about me?”

Phuti Radiphuti seemed unmoved. “What would Mma Ramotswe do without you?” he asked. “You are the one who knows where everything is. You have done all the filing. You know all the clients. You cannot leave Mma Ramotswe.”

Mma Makutsi listened to this with foreboding. It seemed to her that he cared more about Mma Ramotswe than he did about her. Surely as her fiancé he should side with her in all this, should have her interests at heart rather than those of Mma Ramotswe, worthy though she undoubtedly was?

“I came back very quickly,” she said lamely. “I was only away for the morning.”

Phuti Radiphuti looked at her with concern. “Mma Ramotswe relies on you, Mma,” he said. “You know that?”

Mma Makutsi replied that she did. But there were times when one had to move on, did he not think…

She did not finish. “And I can understand why she cannot do without you,” Phuti continued. “It is the same reason why I cannot do without you.”

Mma Makutsi was silent.

Phuti reached for the bottle of peri-peri sauce and fiddled with the cap as he spoke. “It is because you are such a fine person,” he said. “That is why.”

Mma Makutsi gave the chicken a final stir and then sat down. What had begun as a reproach had turned, it seemed, into a compliment. And she could not remember when she had last been complimented for anything; she had forgotten Mma Ramotswe’s complimentary remark about her red dress.

“That’s very kind, Phuti,” she said.

Phuti put down the bottle of sauce and began to fish for something in the pocket of his jacket. “I am not one to make a speech,” he said.

“But you are getting better at it,” said Mma Makutsi. Which was true, she thought; that dreadful stammer had been more or less banished since she had met him, even if it manifested itself now and then when he became flustered. But that was all part of his charm; the charm of this man, her fiancé, the man who would become her husband.

“I am not one to make a speech,” Phuti repeated. “But there is something that I have for you here which I want to give you. It is a ring, Mma. It is a diamond. I have bought it for you.”

He slipped a box across the table to Mma Makutsi. She took it with fumbling hands and prised it open there on the table. The diamond caught the light.

“It is one of our diamonds,” he said. “It is a Botswana diamond.”