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skills. And we have an office boy, Charlie, who is off on some errand at present…”
    Office boy!
Mma Ramotswe bit her lip. Charlie would be incensed by that description. He was, of course, very junior, but he still regarded himself as being a sort of apprentice detective, and to hear Mma Makutsi refer to him as an office boy would cause him immense distress. And as for describing her as “the other lady,” that was going just a little bit too far.
    Mma Ramotswe reached for the door handle once more but again was stopped by what she heard.
    “So you see, Mma,” Mma Makutsi was saying, “I am just the person to take on this enquiry of yours.”
    She pushed the door open to see Mma Makutsi seated at her desk, with the client, a tall woman with long blonde hair, seated in the client’s chair in front of her. Each had a cup of tea in front of her.
    “Ah,” said Mma Ramotswe, as briskly as she could. “You are already here. And I see that Mma Makutsi has been—”
    Mma Makutsi did not let her finish. “This is Mma Ramotswe, Mma,” she said. “She is back now.”
    The woman turned in her seat to greet Mma Ramotswe. Mma Ramotswe lowered her gaze in politeness; it was rude to stare, something that people from other cultures simply did not understand. They told their young children to look at old people when they spoke to them, but they did not do this in order to be rude—they simply did not know that a young person should not stare at a more senior person as if to issue a challenge.
    Her initial glance had enabled her to form an impression of their client, who now introduced herself as Susan Peters. She noticed the pleasant, open expression—a face devoid of guile or suspicion; she noticed the carefully ironed blouse and the thin-banded gold watch on her wrist; she noticed the small lines around the eyes, which were lines, she thought, of sadness, of sorrow.
    Mma Makutsi was getting up from Mma Ramotswe’s desk. “You sit down at your desk, Mma,” Mma Makutsi said. “I will get you some tea.”
    It was a peace offering, an apology for the unlawful occupation of the desk, and Mma Ramotswe smiled graciously as she took her rightful place. Perhaps she had been hard on Mma Makutsi; perhaps she should not resent her assistant claiming a bit of glory in her account of the agency’s history. After all, every one of us wanted to feel important in some sense, and if we occasionally overstated the significance of the role we played in this life, then that, surely, was understandable and should not be held too much against us.
    Mma Ramotswe decided to make everything clear. “I am the manager,” she told the blonde lady. “But Mma Makutsi and I work very closely together.”
    Susan looked at her hands. “I see.”
    “So perhaps you might tell me what it is that brings you to Botswana, Miss Peters.”
    Susan looked up. “Please call me Susan.”
    “If you wish, Mma. It is a fine name, that one.”
    Susan smiled. “It started a long time ago, Mma.”
    “Most problems start a long time ago,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There are hardly any that began yesterday.”
    “I’m not saying I have a problem,” said Susan. “It’s more of…”
    They waited.
    “A doubt?” suggested Mma Ramotswe.
    “It is a doubt, or an…an area of ignorance. It’s to do with piecing together bits of the past.”
    “So that you know what happened?” suggested Mma Makutsi.
    “Maybe,” said Susan.
    “You should tell us, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Starting at the beginning.”
    “The beginning,” said Susan, “was thirty-five years ago. That,
Bomma,
was when I was born.”
    Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi exchanged a glance. The use of the correct Setswana plural,
bomma,
for two women was a sign that this was a woman with more than a passing knowledge of Botswana. Few outsiders spoke the language, and even those who spent years in the country might never progress much beyond the basic greetings.
    “You see, I was born here.”
    Mma