Of course, she had to buy a present for Mma Makutsi’s baby, which she would take with her when she went to see him for the first time. Following his early morning visit to her office, Phuti rang her up later the same day and told her that his wife would be coming out of hospital after two or three days and Mma Ramotswe was welcome to visit any time after the weekend. Grace and the baby were not going to the aunt’s house after all; he had spoken to his aunt about that and had stood his ground, as Mma Ramotswe suggested he should.

‘Grace is looking forward to seeing you,’ said Phuti.

‘I would not like to bother her too soon,’ Mma Ramotswe said. ‘Perhaps I should wait until she has been at home for three or four days. Then I should come.’

‘No, Mma Ramotswe, that is not what Grace wants. She said to me in the hospital that she was looking forward to showing you her baby as soon as she came home. She said that it would be good for the baby to meet people like you right at the beginning.’

‘I doubt if the baby will take much notice of me,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘Babies are busy enough sleeping and… doing the other things that babies do. They don’t really notice us very much.’

Phuti disagreed. ‘Babies are like blotting paper. They soak up everything they see. They start learning Setswana more or less from the first day, or so I’m told.’

Mma Ramotswe doubted that, but did not wish to disillusion him. New fathers were famous for attributing all sorts of abilities to their first-born, and it was harmless enough. Indeed, it was a good thing; a parent who did not believe in a child was not much of a parent. Most parents – mothers, in particular – believed the best of their children, come what may. A boy, or even a man, would always be forgiven by his mother, even if he did something unspeakable. She remembered Note Mokoti’s mother who had thought her son incapable of wrong, even in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. She had heard her say, ‘My son is a very good man – one of the best men in the country. He is so kind.’

So kind! She closed her eyes. She would not allow herself to remember how Note had treated her, and many others too, she suspected. She had forgiven him, yes, but she still did not like to remember. And perhaps a deliberate act of forgetting went along with forgiveness. You forgave, and then you said to yourself: Now I shall forget. Because if you did not forget, then your forgiveness would be tested, perhaps many times and in ways that you could not resist, and you might go back to anger, and to hating.

Then Phuti said something that worried her.