“Violet Sephotho!” called out Mma Makutsi. “You stop right now! You stop! In the name of…” In the name of what? she thought. And it came to her, even if she did not utter the words: In the name of the Botswana Secretarial College. Violet Sephotho had been her contemporary there, the leader of the glamorous girls, the seditious, lazy one who sat at the back of the classroom and read magazines. Mma Makutsi had not forgotten how it was Violet who had pretended to snore during a lecture on double-entry bookkeeping by a very important visitor, the secretary of the Botswana Association of Certified Accountants. Neither had Mma Makutsi forgotten the stream of eligible boyfriends paraded so shamelessly on Violet’s arm; nor the moment when she had announced that she had landed the best-paid job of that year’s graduates in spite of her appallingly bad examination results. And now she was revealed as the author of those unpleasant letters. But why, she wondered, would she have done that?

Violet showed no sign of stopping, but then, turning a corner past an elaborate display of stacked boxes of soap powder, she slipped. She righted herself quickly, but it was enough to send her trolley into the pile of boxes, which tumbled about her in a cloud of white powder. More from surprise than from anything else, she stood where she was, allowing Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi to catch up with her.

“We need to talk to you, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“About those letters,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Violet.

Mma Makutsi’s eyes were wide. “You don’t? Those letters addressed to Mma Ramotswe. The ones that made those remarks about us. Those ones. You don’t know anything about them?”

Violet dusted soap powder off her dress. “No, I don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about, Grace Makutsi. I really don’t.”

“Then why did you run away from us, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe. She spoke calmly, and there was about her demean-our none of the outrage that had so obviously seized Mma Makutsi.

Violet hesitated. “Was I running away, Mma? What made you think I was running away?”

“But you were!” shouted Mma Makutsi.

“You saw us, and you ran away,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It did look a bit like that, Mma.”