"I am very worried," he said. "You will not understand a father's worries. It is different for a mother. A father feels a special sort of worry."

Mma Ramotswe smiled reassuringly. "The news is good," she said. "There is no boyfriend." "And what about this note?" he said. "What about this Jack person? Is that all imagination?"

"Yes," said Mma Ramotswe simply. "Yes, it is." Mr Patel looked puzzled. He lifted his walking stick and tapped his artificial leg several times. Then he opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing.

'You see," said Mma Ramotswe, "Nandira has been inventing a social life for herself. She made up a boyfriend for herself just to bring a bit of… of freedom into her life. The best thing you can do is just to ignore it. Give her a bit more time to lead her own life. Don't keep asking her to account for her time. There's no boyfriend and there may not even be one for some time."

Mr Patel put his walking stick down on the floor. Then he closed his eyes and appeared deep in thought.

"Why should I do this?" he said after a while. "Why should I give in to these modern ideas?"

Mma Ramotswe was ready with her answer. "Recause if you don't, then the imaginary boyfriend may turn into a real one. That's why."

Mma Ramotswe watched him as he wrestled with her advice. Then, without warning he stood up, tottered for a while before he got his balance, and then turned to face her.

"You are a very clever woman," he said. "And I'm going to take your advice. I will leave her to get on with her life, and then I am sure that in two or three years she will agree with us and allow me to arra… to help her to find a suitable man to marry."

"That could easily happen," said Mma Ramotswe, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Yes," said Mr Patel warmly. "And I shall have you to thank for it all!"

MMA RAMOTSWE often thought about Nandira when she drove past the Patel compound, with its high white wall. She expected to see her from time to time, now that she knew what she looked like, but she never did, at least not until a year later, when, while taking her Saturday morning coffee on the verandah of the President Hotel, she felt somebody tap her shoulder. She turned round in her seat, and there was Nandira, with a young man. The young man was about eighteen, she thought, and he had a pleasant, open expression.

"Mma Ramotswe," said Nandira in a friendly way. "I thought it was you."

Mma Ramotswe shook Nandira's hand. The young man smiled at her.

"This is my friend," said Nandira. "I don't think you've met him."

The young man stepped forward and held out his hand.

"Jack," he said.

MMA RAMOTSWE drove her tiny white van before dawn along the sleeping roads of Gaborone, past the Kalahari Breweries, past the Dry Lands Research Station, and out onto the road that led north. A man leaped out from bushes at the side of the road and tried to flag her down; but she was unwilling to stop in the dark, for you never knew who might be wanting a lift at such an hour. He disappeared into the shadows again, and in her mirror she saw him deflate with disappointment. Then, just past the Mochudi turnoff, the sun came up, rising over the wide plains that stretched away towards the course of the Limpopo. Suddenly it was there, smiling on Africa, a slither of golden red ball, inching up, floating effortlessly free of the horizon to dispel the last wisps of morning mist.

The thorn trees stood clear in the sharp light of morning, and there were birds upon them, and in flight-hoopoes, louries, and tiny birds which she could not name. Here and there cattle stood at the fence which followed the road for mile upon mile. They raised their heads and stared, or ambled slowly on, tugging at the tufts of dry grass that clung tenaciously to the hardened earth.

This was a dry land. Just a short distance to the west lay the Kalahari, a hinterland of ochre that stretched off, for unimaginable miles, to the singing emptinesses of the Namib. If she turned her tiny white van off on one of the tracks that struck off from the main road, she could drive for perhaps thirty or forty miles before her wheels would begin to sink into the sand and spin hopelessly. The vegetation would slowly become sparser, more desert-like. The thorn trees would thin out and there would be ridges of thin earth, through which the omnipresent sand would surface and crenellate. There would be patches of bareness, and scattered grey rocks, and there would be no sign of human activity. To live with this great dry interior, brown and hard, was the lot of the Batswana, and it was this that made them cautious, and careful in their husbandry.

If you went there, out into the Kalahari, you might hear lions by night. For the lions were there still, on these wide landscapes, and they made their presence known in the darkness, in coughing grunts and growls. She had been there once as a young woman, when she had gone with her friend to visit a remote cattle post. It was as far into the Kalahari as cattle could go, and she had felt the utter loneliness of a place without people. This was Botswana distilled; the essence of her country.

It was the rainy season, and the land was covered with green. Rain could transform it so quickly, and had done so; now the ground was covered with shoots of sweet new grass, Namaqualand daisies, the vines of Tsama melons, and aloes with stalk flowers of red and yellow.

They had made a fire at night, just outside the crude huts which served as shelter at the cattle post, but the light from the fire seemed so tiny under the great empty night sky with its dipping constellations. She had huddled close to her friend, who had told her that she should not be frightened, because lions would keep away from fires, as would supernatural beings,tokoloshes and the like.

She awoke in the small hours of the morning, and the fire was low. She could make out its embers through the spaces between the branches that made up the wall of the hut. Somewhere, far away, there was a grunting sound, but she was not afraid, and she walked out of the hut to stand underneath the sky and draw the dry, clear air into her lungs. And she thought: I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own. She waited for another thought to come, but none did, and so she crept back into the hut and the warmth of the blankets on her sleeping mat.

Now, driving the tiny white van along those rolling miles, she thought that one day she might go back into the Kalahari, into those empty spaces, those wide grasslands that broke and broke the heart.