‘That is good,’ said Mmamodise. ‘I have not seen that boy for many years, but I remember him. He was a very good boy.’

‘He spent his holidays on the farm?’

‘Yes, he did. He was there a lot. He was very helpful with the farm work, and he used to help me, too. He was very keen on peeling potatoes. He had a penknife that he used for everything, including for peeling potatoes.’

‘So you’re pleased that he is getting the farm?’

There was a slight hesitation, so Mma Ramotswe decided to probe. ‘You feel a bit doubtful, Mma?’

Mmamodise reacted quickly and defensively. ‘I am not doubtful, Mma. He is a good boy – I told you that.’

Mma Ramotswe decided that if Mmamodise knew anything, she was not going to reveal it in the course of an informal conversation.

‘Mmamodise, I’ll tell you why I’m interested in this. It is because there is somebody – a lawyer – who thinks that Liso is not who he claims to be. She thinks he is another boy altogether.’

The effect of this showed even before Mma Ramotswe had finished speaking. Mmamodise clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh! So they know.’

Now it was Mma Ramotswe who hesitated. Let somebody think you know what you don’t know, Clovis Andersen had written. Then it will all come out. But should she apply that technique – that trick – to this good woman, this kind and conscientious housemother?

She did not have to answer her own question, as Mmamodise continued of her own accord. ‘I knew all about it, Mma. I knew because I was living in that house, and you hear things. But I never spoke to anybody about it – never.’

‘That is very good of you, Mma. But now…’

‘Now everybody is talking about it, you say.’

‘I didn’t say that, Mma. I said that a lawyer had asked me to look into it.’

Mmamodise was anguished. ‘It is not his fault. How can it be a child’s fault?’

‘It is never the child’s fault,’ said Mma Ramotswe, wondering what fault was being talked about. ‘It is always the fault of the adults.’

‘But sometimes it isn’t the mother’s fault,’ said Mmamodise.

‘No, that is true. The mother is not always to blame.’

‘She was very young.’

Mma Ramotswe wondered who: the aunt? ‘Rra Edgar’s sister?’

The answer Mmamodise gave was crucial, and it was a single word. ‘Yes.’

‘She is the mother of Liso.’

A nod of the head confirmed that. ‘When they discovered that she was pregnant,’ Mmamodise continued, ‘they sent her up to Francistown to get her as far away as possible. They did not want the child to be born on the farm.’

Mma Ramotswe thought quickly. ‘And then they sent the boy to Swaziland?’