It was difficult to see this happening, for the simple reason that there were presumably no secretaries with anything like Mma Makutsi’s ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College. Mma Makutsi had reported that a young woman from Mahalapye had recently managed to get eighty-three per cent in the finals – a very creditable mark but still a whole fourteen per cent shy of her own.

‘It was her shorthand that let her down,’ Mma Makutsi had said, adding in a resigned tone: ‘It always is, you know.’

Mma Ramotswe had replied, ‘Yes, it always is,’ as if she knew about these things. Perhaps she should have said, ‘Yes, and I am let down too, as mine is very rusty,’ but she did not.

Now, she too stood up from the breakfast table. If she had to get a new secretary, then that was what she would do. And even if she ended up with a secretary whose shorthand let her down – and that seemed to be something that it was simply impossible to avoid – she would make the best of it and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency would continue in whatever way it could.

She would have to speak to Mma Makutsi that day. At least she did not have to broach the subject of pregnancy itself; at least Mma Makutsi had told her about that. It would be far more difficult for an employer if the employee had not said anything about being pregnant. That would not be easy, she thought, because if you went up to somebody and said, Are you pregnant? the question might be taken the wrong way. It might sound as if you had said, Are you pregnant yet? Or, Are you pregnant yet again? Both of these could be considered rude by some people, and would almost certainly be so viewed by Mma Makutsi, who was very sensitive to slight.