She explored the possibility for a few minutes. She was well disposed towards Mma Sheba because she had been kind to her at the lunch all those years ago. But lawyers could be calculating people and perhaps she should be cautious about accepting her story at face value. Again, Clovis Andersen said something about being politely sceptical and not trusting everything that a person told you, even if you liked the person. Friends can be good liars, he said. Yes, that was true; presumably liars had friends, as everybody had. But did liars lie to their friends, or did they tell them the truth while they went about lying to other people? She stared up at the ceiling but saw no answer there. She would have to think about that again – perhaps when Mma Makutsi returned to work. She could say: ‘Mma, I have been thinking about liars and whether they can have true friends.’ And Mma Makutsi would say, ‘Don’t ask a liar that question, Mma,’ and they would both burst out laughing, as they often did.

She closed The Principles of Private Detection and returned it to the shelf. She had now decided what she needed to do, which was to go to the farm, introduce herself, and form her own assessment of the situation. She had wondered about how she could explain her interest in the matter without revealing her client’s suspicions. This was going to be difficult as she did not like using deception. Of course, she could claim to be lost. Nobody in Botswana would turn away somebody who had lost her way, or they would not do so in the Botswana in which she had been born and brought up; whether that was still the case in the Botswana of today, she was not so sure. But she thought, on balance, that however much things might have changed on the surface, people were still good at heart and had not forgotten everything that the country had tried to teach them. No, people will not turn another away. Not yet at least, not until the old Botswana ways – the code that had been followed by her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, and had served him so well all his life – no longer accounted for anything at all, which was not the case, she felt, thank heavens.

‘Don’t worry, Daddy,’ she said under her breath. ‘Botswana has not changed – not in the things that really matter.’