Mma Ramotswe laughed. “I do not think so, Mma—”

Mma Makutsi, sticking down an envelope flap with perhaps slightly more force than was strictly necessary, cut her short. “And who says the air belongs to the Government, anyway?”

“I don’t think the Government says that, Mma.”

“Oh, don’t they? I think they do, Mma. If they didn’t say that the air belongs to them, then why do they say that you need their permission to fly through it? Phuti knows a pilot, and he told him that he has to speak on the radio to some government people called Air Traffic Control and ask their permission to fly through the air above Gaborone. That means that they think they own it—as if it’s their own yard, or something like that.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “They do not say they own the air, Mma. All that those people are doing is making sure that planes don’t fly into one another. If you’ve got one plane going this way and another plane flying from the other direction and they meet, then that would not be very good, would it?”

Mma Makutsi hesitated for a moment; but no, she was not convinced. “They are just interfering,” she said. “The pilots can see exactly where they’re going. They’re not asleep.”

“It happens very quickly,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And there are clouds, Mma. You cannot see what is happening in a cloud.”

“Then you shouldn’t fly through them,” snapped Mma Makutsi. “You see a cloud and you go round it. That is all you need to do. Phuti says that it’s not a good thing to fly through clouds. You can get struck by lightning and then that will be the end.”

Mma Ramotswe was silent. She had great admiration for Mma Makutsi, but not when she was in one of these contrary moods. When that happened, she would dig in over some matter and become quite unreasonable, even if it was plain that she was arguing a lost cause. There were so many examples of her doing this, and Mma Ramotswe had learned that the best response was to change the subject.

“Lightning is very dangerous,” she said. “Not just in the air. That poor man in Molepolole—did you read about him, Mma? He was struck by lightning when he was walking home across a field. He is late now.”

“It was very sad,” said Mma Makutsi. “I read that the lightning hit his hat. Perhaps he should have had a lightning conductor on the top of it, with a wire going down his back to the earth. Do you think that would work, Mma?”

“I do not think so, Mma Makutsi,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is safer to stay indoors.”