“I think, by the way, that I knew your aunt, the one who lived for some years in Mochudi and is now late. Sephotho is not a common name, so my late friend must have been your relative. I remember that she always spoke very highly of one of her nieces who was doing very well in Gaborone, and that must have been you! Your aunt was very proud of you, as I recall.

“Yours sincerely, Precious Ramotswe.”

Mma Ramotswe finished. She lifted her gaze up to find Mma Makutsi, her pencil suspended in mid-air, staring at her. “You can’t say that, Mma Ramotswe. Violet Sephotho is—”

“Is a woman like you and me, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“Who can feel bad about herself, the same as everyone. And who wants to be loved, the same as everyone. So saying what I have just said is better, far better, than making her feel even less loved than she is.”

She looked at Mma Makutsi, whose pencil still remained poised. “Did you get all of that, Mma Makutsi?”

The pencil descended again to the notepad and made further squiggles across the page.

“We won’t hear again from Violet Sephotho,” said Mma Ramotswe quietly. “That is the end of that.”

She paused. She could see that Mma Makutsi was not convinced.

“You don’t agree?” Mma Ramotswe asked.

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “Why will she stop? There is something that made her do that. That something will not have gone away.”

“Yes, there is something that made her do it,” Mma Ramotswe said. “It is called envy, and it can make people do very strange things, Mma. She is envious of you because you have everything that she does not. You did so well at the Botswana Secretarial College with your ninety-seven per cent. How does a fifty per cent—”

“At the most,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “Sometimes even less. Forty-two per cent once, I think.”

“There you are,” said Mma Ramotswe. She knew how hard it had been for Mma Makutsi: the younger woman had started with so little, had fought for everything she had; had lived with her bad skin, lived with her large glasses, lived with everything. And even now that she had something which many women would dearly love—a kind husband, or almost, with his own business—she could not believe that anybody would be envious of her.

“It’s your Phuti too,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He has given you a position, security. Violet has none of that and she resents you for it. She wants to put you down. That’s why she wrote.”

“But she wrote to you, Mma Ramotswe. Your name was on the envelope.”