She glanced at him sideways, taking in the neat appearance, the black trousers with the thin leather belt, the polished shoes. He was exactly as she had imagined he would be, a mid-level employee of the bank, doing well, heading for promotion to branch manager at some point. Such lives were quietly and correctly led to the very edge of the grave; lives of caution and respectability, with few high points and moments of excitement. She allowed her glance to move to his left hand: no ring. That was not conclusive, of course, but it was surprising; she would have expected a ring.

They walked slowly up the centre of the square that opened up in front of the President Hotel. Traders had set out their wares on the large concrete flagstones that covered the square, the goods ranged out carefully on sheets of plastic or sacking: roughly made sandals, wooden carvings, lines of glistening sunglasses. They passed a dealer in traditional medicines who had created small piles of herbs, roots, barks, crushed leaves. Mma Ramotswe looked down and saw a root that she recognised, that she had been given to chew as a girl, which worked, she thought, for something that she had forgotten about—a sore stomach, perhaps. She leaned down and asked the woman selling the herbs whether that was for the stomach and the woman nodded. “You have a pain, Mma? In your stomach?”

“I have no pain, Mma. But I know that is a good thing, that one. It is very good.”

Mr. Sekape said nothing. He wanted to hear what she had to say to him; he was not interested in old roots.

Mma Ramotswe straightened up. “You were adopted, Rra,” she said. “Mma Potokwane has told me.”

Mr. Sekape stopped, and stiffened. “That is true, Mma. I was very small. I was looked after by a lady who lived right here in Gaborone. She was a teacher at the secondary school. She became my mother.”

“And her husband?”

He shook his head. “He was late by the time she took me. He worked for the government, in the Ministry of Education. She had a small pension from them, but her own job was a good one. She gave me everything.”

They started to walk again. His initial stiffness of manner when she had first raised the matter of his adoption had eased, and he began to talk more freely. “She is late now. Three years ago. I still miss her, because I carried on living in her house right up to the end. Now I have that house to myself.”

Mma Ramotswe made a sympathetic sound, something between yes and I see. “You must miss her.” And she thought of her own father, whom she missed.