And Mma Makutsi and her bed? That was simple; hardly a problem at all. She should tell Phuti Radiphuti the truth, because that was what he was owed; but the truth would include the fact that Mma Makutsi was afraid to speak to him about what she had done. Mma Sebina and her lies? Simple too: she must be treated as if she was telling the truth, because that was what she thought it was. Everything, in fact, was very clear, and very untroubling. In such a way might worries be lifted, allowing them to float up of their own accord, float up off one’s shoulders and disappear into the high sky of Botswana, so empty, so white, that it made one feel dizzy simply to look at it.

She rose to her feet and for a moment felt unsteady. It would be so easy to fall, she thought, to go over the edge in that moment of disorientation that can come when you suddenly stand up and the blood rushes from the head. But the feeling passed, and she was steady enough as she took one last look at the land down below, the piece of this earth that she knew so well. Then she picked her way across the rocks to the place where the tiny white van was parked, got into it, and began the drive back to Gaborone. The landmarks of her journey earlier that day would repeat themselves in the opposite order: graveyard, riverbed, whitewashed school, home. The wrong order for a journey, thought Mma Ramotswe, and smiled.

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

THE DOCTOR’S HOUSE

MR. J.L.B. MATEKONI had not told Mma Ramotswe that he had set up an appointment for Motholeli to see the doctor from Selebi-Phikwe. He did not wish to deceive her, but his suspicion that she would not approve had been proved right.

“There is no point,” she said. “We know that, Rra. We have been told.”

He had rehearsed his arguments to the contrary, and he had used them. There was such a thing as a second opinion, he pointed out; there were plenty of cases in which one doctor had given up and then another doctor had achieved a cure. Were there? she asked. And did he know of anywhere this thing that Motholeli had, this precise thing, had been cured?

He knew that he was no match for Mma Ramotswe; it was something to do with the sort of mind she had, a detective’s mind, which would always come up with arguments that he, a mere mechanic, would never be able to refute. But there were second opinions, and he held his ground.

“It’s the same with cars,” he argued. “If you brought a car into the garage and Charlie told you that he thought you needed a new gearbox, wouldn’t you want a second opinion? And might not that second opinion be quite different from Charlie’s?”