It took a couple of minutes for the door to be opened by the aunt. She was clearly surprised, and for a moment she did not reply to Mma Makutsi’s greeting. Then, when she did, her tone was hostile. “I am sorry. You cannot see Phuti. He is sleeping now. I am very sorry that you have had a wasted journey.”

Mma Makutsi tried to look over the aunt’s shoulder into the room beyond. There was a radio playing somewhere in the background, Radio Botswana. Phuti listened to Radio Botswana -but so did everyone.

“I can wait until he wakes up,” said Mma Makutsi.

The aunt pursed her lips. “There is not room for you to wait. I am very sorry.”

Mma Makutsi glanced behind her. “I can wait on the veranda, Mma. There is a chair.”

The aunt indicated that this would not do. “That is a private chair, Mma. I’m very sorry. We can’t have anybody sitting in that chair.”

Mma Makutsi drew in her breath. “A private chair?”

The aunt nodded. “That is what I said.” She looked at her watch. “It is now time for me to do something else, Mma. I shall tell Phuti that you have called to see him, and I’m sure that he will be very happy to hear that.”

Mma Makutsi struggled to control herself. The lenses of the large glasses she wore were beginning to mist up. That did not happen very often, but it was a bad sign when it did.

“But I am his fiancée, Mma,” she said. “We are engaged to be married, as I think you know.”

The aunt stared at her. Mma Makutsi found it difficult to read the emotion in the other woman’s gaze. Was it hatred? It did not look quite like it. And then she realised: this was fear. It was just as Mma Ramotswe had said.

“So I think that I have the right to see him. I really think that, Mma. Not some time in the future, but now-now.” It was a bold statement, and she felt her heart pounding within her as she spoke.

The aunt shifted slightly on her feet. “You say you are engaged, Mma. That is very interesting. I do not recall any lobola being agreed, or maybe my memory is going. I do not think that this family has agreed to pay any lobola to…”-she paused, looking squarely at Mma Makutsi-“to any other family.”

Mma Makutsi recoiled at the way she said family, dwelling on the word, filling it with contempt. Mma Makutsi was not the only one being insulted here; this was an insult to her people in Bobonong, to her uncles; to the uncle with the broken nose, to the uncle who experienced difficulty in finding the right word.

The aunt now continued. “You are a secretary, I hear, Mma.”

“Assistant detective.”

The aunt laughed. “So that is the new word for secretary. They are always inventing new words for old things. So that is what they call a secretary today-an assistant detective.” She was enjoying herself, and stopped to relish her own words. “And what do they call a cook these days, I wonder? Is he also a detective, do you think? Or do they call him a pilot, or a general? What do you think, Mma?”

Mma Makutsi felt flustered. “I am not talking about any of that,” she said. And then the response came to her. “Actually, I do not know what they call a cook, Mma. But I do know what they call an aunt who has only bitterness in her heart. They call her a cow. That is what they call her.”

She turned on her heel and left the veranda. As she passed the unfriendly brown car, with its small, mean-spirited windows, she heard the aunt shouting behind her. But she was not going to stop; she had seen enough village shouting-matches up in Bobonong to know that the thing to do was to walk away. Phuti would not get her message, she suspected, but the aunt could not detain him forever. He would run away if she tried. Or hop, she thought, bitterly; the aunt might take his new leg and hide it and he would have to hop. She did not like to think about it.

SHE WENT STRAIGHT from the aunt’s house to Mma Ramotswe’s house on Zebra Drive. She did not like to trouble Mma Ramotswe at home, and rarely did so, but there were times when only the company of her employer, that wise, good woman, would do. This, she felt, was such an occasion, and she knew that Mma Ramotswe would understand.

She found her on the veranda, as she had hoped she would, drinking a cup of red bush tea.

“I have just come back,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I had a long talk with Herbert Mateleke. Now I need some tea to recover.” She indicated for Mma Makutsi to sit down.

“So this chair is not a private chair,” said Mma Makutsi, as she lowered herself into it.

“What?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “What is this about private chairs?”

Mma Makutsi explained that she had been to see Phuti, and had been denied the opportunity to sit on the veranda and wait. “There was a chair there,” she said. “But the aunt said that it was a private chair.”

Mma Ramotswe let out a hoot of laughter. “A private chair? What a silly thing to say! Can I give you some tea, Mma, in one of my private cups? Or perhaps they are not private. Perhaps they are public.”

Mma Makutsi grinned. The encounter with the aunt had been traumatic, but now Mma Ramotswe was reminding her that it was really rather ridiculous. “And then I called her a cow. And I walked away.”

Again Mma Ramotswe laughed. “If she is a cow, then she is a very thin cow,” she said. “Perhaps she will get fatter now that the rains have arrived and there is more grass. I hope that Phuti finds good grazing for her.” She was smiling, but then she stopped. “It is funny, but maybe we shouldn’t laugh too much, Mma. She is a poor, unhappy woman.”

“She is stopping me from seeing Phuti.”

“Then phone him. He has a mobile phone, doesn’t he?”

Mma Makutsi explained that she had tried to do so, but that she had not got through. “I think that the battery is flat,” she said. “He was always forgetting to charge it, and I do not think he has been able to do that since he was in hospital.” She thought of other possibilities. “Maybe he has lost the phone, or it was stolen in hospital. There are always thieves in those places.”

Mma Ramotswe looked thoughtful. What Mma Makutsi said about thieves in hospitals was quite true. Recently she had heard of a thief who had become ill and had to spend a couple of weeks in hospital. He not only stole food and money from other patients in his ward, but he took the soap from the bathrooms and several bottles of aspirin from the nurses’ cupboard. Finally he lifted a stethoscope from the pocket of the doctor attending him and was caught trying to sell it to another doctor.

“Whatever has happened,” said Mma Ramotswe, “you know that sooner or later Phuti will be in touch. He will telephone. He will send a message. He’s not going to ignore you, is he?”

Mma Makutsi knew that this was probably true, but she was worried that the aunt would try to prevent him from getting in touch. She had shown her cards, and they did not favour Mma Makutsi.

“It’s very unfair, Mma. It really is. That woman has kidnapped him-that’s what she’s done.”

Mma Ramotswe took Mma Makutsi’s arm and patted it reassuringly. “I don’t think it’s kidnapping, Mma. He’s an adult, and he must have gone with her of his own free will. That is not kidnapping, Mma.” She searched her assistant’s face and found only anxiety.

“Listen, Mma,” Mma Ramotswe went on. “You need to take your mind off all this. We are going to go up to Maun, and, if you like, we can go up a day or two early. Then, when we come back to Gaborone, I’m sure that Phuti will be ready to see you. There will be a message, I’m sure there will.”

Mma Makutsi was not entirely persuaded, but she felt calmer now. Talking to Mma Ramotswe had that effect, she had noticed: everybody felt calmer when they had discussed things with her. It did not have to be anything important-although Mma Ramotswe was always willing to talk about weighty matters-you could talk to her about something as simple as the weather or the price of sausages, and you would come away reassured. Perhaps the weather was not going to be as dry and hot as everybody feared-perhaps there really would be good rains; perhaps sausages were not as expensive as they appeared to be, given that they contained all that meat, and there was no wastage with a sausage.