Mma Ramotswe introduced herself. “You do not know me, Mma. I am Precious Ramotswe.”

The woman listened attentively, with the manner that older people have with names. She belonged to a Botswana where names meant something, connected people with places, cousins, events; even with cattle.

“Ramotswe? There was an Obed Ramotswe in Mochudi, I think. He…”

“Was my father. He is late now. My father.”

The woman lowered her eyes in sympathy. “I am sorry. He was a good man.”

Mma Ramotswe felt proud, as she always did when somebody remembered her father. Invariably they used the expression good man; and he was. He was the best of men.

The woman invited her into the kitchen and moved an old enamelled kettle onto the ring of a stove. “I will make tea, Mma,” she said. “Then we can talk. We can talk about your father. He knew my late husband’s brother. They were friends.”

“I think I heard your name mentioned, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Mapoi. It seemed a bit familiar. That is why. My father and your late brother-in-law.”

“No, he is not late, that one. My husband is late, but his brother is not late. He is living down near Lobatse. I never see him because he is scared to travel. He says that buses crash too often, so he stays down there. We get more frightened as we get older, Mma. Or that’s what I sometimes think. More and more frightened—of everything.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. It was true, she thought. But why? Because we had seen so many things go wrong in our lifetime? Would she end up like that, afraid to travel in a bus?

Mma Mapoi gestured to a chair, and Mma Ramotswe accepted the invitation. It was a traditional chair, strung with strips of cured hide threaded through holes bored into the hard-wood frame and then criss-crossed to provide a comfortable seat. It was a chair that harked back to a simpler Botswana, to a Botswana of sweet-breathed cattle by the side of the road, of morning air spiced with the smoke of wood fires; who would need more of a chair than that?

“I have come here because I am a detective,” said Mma Ramotswe. “No, don’t be alarmed. I am not a police detective. I am just somebody who finds things out for people.”

“Missing people?” asked Mma Mapoi.

“Yes, Mma. That is exactly what I do. In this case, I am looking for relatives for somebody. There is a woman called Mma Sebina…”

“There was a Mma Sebina,” Mma Mapoi corrected her. “She is late, I’m afraid. Sometimes it seems that everyone is late.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “We all become late, sooner or later. But her daughter—”

Mma Mapoi clapped her hands together. “Of course, Mma. I was forgetting her daughter. I have not seen her recently, you see. I was very friendly with her mother. Is the daughter well?”