“Then I am sure that wherever she is, she is pleased, Mma. I am sure, by the way, that she loved you a great deal. And I am sure that the thing that happened was not something she would have wished to happen.”

“I am sure that is true,” said Mma Sebina.

They drank their tea. There is a final thing, Mma Ramotswe suddenly thought; a final, final thing. The woman who had kept a chair in the tree: Why had she been so adamant that Mma Sebina was not adopted? She claimed, after all, to have witnessed her birth; why would she have said that?

“There was a friend of your mother’s,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“I saw her when I went down to Otse. She has a tree—”

“And a chair hanging up in the tree?” interrupted Mma Sebina. “Oh dear.”

“Why do you say that, Mma?”

“Because that poor lady lives in a world of dreams,” said Mma Sebina. “She is famous for that. And if she told you that she used to have a tomato stall, and that the Minister of Agriculture awarded her a prize for the tomatoes—that is all nonsense, Mma. I’m sorry to say. All nonsense. But she’s harmless, and if she wants to sit under that tree with the chair hanging in it, then there are worse ways of spending one’s time.”

Mma Ramotswe had to agree with this. There were. Considerably worse ways.

MR. J.L.B. MATEKONI arrived home the following morning, unannounced. Mma Ramotswe had not expected him until the next afternoon, but his truck pulled up outside the gate while Mma Ramotswe was taking her early morning walk about the garden. The plants were doing well with the recent rains, and she was examining a shrub which she had planted a few days before, and thinking about Mma Makutsi, when she heard the horn sound and she looked up to see his truck.

She ran towards the gate. He waved from the cab, and so did Motholeli, sitting beside him. Then she pulled the gate open and the truck passed through. She saw the layer of dust on the window, through which Motholeli looked at her, smiling. She saw the spattering of red mud thrown up against the mudguards; they had travelled through rain.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni stepped out. “We left very early,” he said. “I woke up at three and I decided that we would leave then. It is easier driving in the cool of the day.”

“Of course.” She looked at his face, searching. She knew the answer, but she still looked. People had sometimes defied the worst predictions of medical science; it had happened.

He dropped his gaze to the ground, and she knew. She knew immediately.

“I’m sorry, Rra.”