The view from Bobonong, she mused; was that how the world looked to Mma Makutsi? It seemed an odd thing to say, and yet all of us had a view from somewhere; a view of the world from the perspective of who we were, of what had happened to us, of how we thought about things. Her view was the view from Mochudi, where she had been born and brought up by her late father, that great man, Obed Ramotswe. And his view had been the view from where? The view from Botswana, she decided: the view of the world that seemed essentially and naturally right, because it was a view that understood how things really were and how God must surely have intended them to be when He first made Botswana. She smiled to herself as she savoured the idea that God had looked at the world, seen a wide stretch of land and had said, This shall be Botswana. He had given it the Kalahari; He had given it the good land along the eastern border, and had added, for good measure, the Makadikadi Salt Pans. But then, just as He was about to give it wide and reliable rivers, He was distracted somehow and forgot to finish what He was doing, or found that He had already given all His rivers away and had only a few left for Botswana… It was easily done when you were making a world, especially one as demanding as this, where there were so many people who thought they should have more rivers than they actually had, and who enviously eyed the land – and the rivers – of others.

‘What then, Mma Ramotswe?’

She was brought back to where she was – not in the sky, looking down on Botswana, but in a very real and immediate part of Botswana, namely the kitchen of her house on Zebra Drive, where her husband was about to leave for work and where there were still many chores to do before she herself could leave for her office.

‘When Mma Makutsi goes off on maternity leave,’ she answered, ‘then I shall have to get another assistant.’

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni looked unconvinced. ‘Easier said than done, you know.’

He was right – she knew that. No doubt she would find somebody who fancied the idea of being her secretary. And this time, she resolved, the post would be very clearly and unambiguously described as a secretarial one, with no suggestion that it was a stepping stone to being an assistant detective or, as Mma Makutsi was at pains to insist, an associate detective, whatever that was. Yes, there would be many applicants for the job, but would any of them be as well qualified and efficient as Mma Makutsi?