Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni now showed a rare degree of determination. “It’s all arranged,” he said. “We shall go tomorrow.”

And now, packing Motholeli’s suitcase for the trip to Johannesburg, she found herself folding the young girl’s clothes, wondering what would be necessary for whatever lay ahead. Would she spend the time at the clinic in bed? In which case more than two nightgowns would be necessary—the one with flowers on it, the one she liked, and the plain blue one which she liked rather less. And the stiff brush with which she liked to tease out the tight curls of her hair, not that Mma Ramotswe approved of that; braiding would have been better. And the Setswana Bible that she had been given by Mma Potokwane when she had left the orphan farm, which had become a memento of that part of her life, now some years away; of the childhood, really, that had been so hard and empty of love until her arrival, with Puso, at the orphan farm. That Bible was a talisman, in a way, and she kept it prominently on the table in her room, alongside a piece of deep-blue crystalline rock from the north of Botswana, a piece of a country that was predominantly composed of browns and yellows but had these veins of startling green and blue just beneath the skin of the land.

Motholeli herself seemed to be taking the trip in her stride. Mma Ramotswe had been concerned that her hopes would be raised unnecessarily—indeed, that was one of her grounds of objection to the whole idea—but the girl herself was calm.

“You do know what the doctors have told us?” Mma Ramotswe said. “They always try to help, but sometimes…”

She faltered. It was not easy to explain the hard side of things to a child, or to anybody really. Mma Ramotswe would have wished the world to be otherwise, but it was not. She would have wished for the suffering of Africa to be relieved, to be legislated out of existence, but it seemed that this would never be, for fundamental unfairness seemed to be a condition of human life. There were rich, there were poor; and whilst one might rail against the injustices which kept people poor, it seemed that these were stubborn to the point of entrenchment. And in the meantime, whilst waiting for justice, or just for a chance, what could one say to the poor, who had only one life, one brief spell of time, and were spending their short moment of life in hardship? And what could she say to Motholeli?

Children are resilient. “I know, Mma,” said Motholeli. “I know that the doctors have said they cannot help me. I do not mind if this new doctor tries. Maybe there are clever doctors in Johannesburg who can do this thing. But I will not mind if they cannot.”