person lives next door.”
“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “Then they’ll say, ‘Oh no, that person doesn’t live there. That is a young woman called Nametso.’ ”
“And then?” asked Charlie.
Mma Makutsi took off her spectacles and gave them a cursory wipe. “Then you say, ‘Oh, I think I know her. Is she the one from Molepolole?’ ”
Mma Ramotswe joined in. “Mma Makutsi is right,” she reassured Charlie. “It is what Clovis Andersen calls routine arm-work.”
Mma Makutsi corrected her: “Leg-work, Mma. He calls it leg-work.”
“It is all the same,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Arm-work, leg-work—it is all the same thing. It is what we do, Charlie, and I think you are getting better and better at it.”
He beamed with pleasure. It was so easy to make Charlie happy, thought Mma Ramotswe. Indeed, it was so easy to make anybody happy. All that was required was a kind word or two—a kind word that cost nothing, and yet could have such a profound effect.
“Yes,” she said. “You are doing very well, Charlie.”
His smile broadened. “You are like my mother, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. And then, becoming aware of Mma Makutsi’s gaze upon him, he added, “And you, Mma Makutsi, you are like my auntie.”
“Thank you, Charlie,” said Mma Makutsi—a bit primly, thought Mma Ramotswe, but then he had described her as his aunt, and aunts, of all people, could be allowed to be prim.
But Mma Ramotswe thought: this young man is not yet there. She was not quite sure where there was, but it was the place that he wanted to get to, a place where he would not be poor, where he would be able to feel proud of himself, a place where he would be something. He might get there, but it would be something of a miracle if he did, given the odds stacked against him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MMA BOKO DISAPPROVES
MMA BOKO LOOKED at Mma Ramotswe over a pair of tortoiseshell half-moon glasses.
“I like your glasses, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Boko removed them self-consciously. She giggled. “They are just for reading, Mma. You know how it is? They are printing everything much smaller these days. All the time they are making it smaller.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Or our eyes are changing, Mma. They are becoming tired and they think, This is much smaller now.”
Mma Boko replaced her glasses. “There are many things I am happy not to see,” she said. “When I look around town these days, I see many things that I think should not be there—many things that I do not like.”
Mma Ramotswe knew what she meant. “Oh, you are right, Mma—you are very right. There are things that you would never have seen in the past.” And there were things that you would have seen in the past that you would never see today—and thank heavens for that. There had been cruelties and injustices that would never be tolerated today.
But that was not what interested Mma Boko; disapproval is less effort than approval, and, for those who disapprove, twice as satisfying.
“I’ll give you an example, Mma,” said Mma Boko. “I’ll give you an example of something that will shock you.”
Mma Ramotswe said nothing. She wanted to tell Mma Boko that nothing would shock her, as in her profession she had seen just about everything. But then she realised that she had not; the bad behaviour with which the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was concerned was not really all that bad. They saw selfishness and greed; they saw infidelity and other forms of disloyalty; they saw vanity, and its cousin, insecurity. They did not see the major cruelties, nor the great frauds and dishonesties.
“Tell me, Mma,” she said.
Mma Boko drew in her breath. “You know that place?” she began.
Mma Ramotswe frowned. “What place, Mma? There are many places.”
Mma Boko waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the Tlokweng Road. “That place they call River-something. That place where there are shops.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “I know the shops. I go there for groceries. That supermarket—”
Mma Boko raised a finger. “That supermarket, Mma—yes, right there. I was there with my friend Mma Magadi—you’ll know her, I think.”
Again, Mma Ramotswe frowned. Mma Magadi? Somewhere in the back of her memory, the name chimed with something. But that was the problem: so many names chimed with something, and yet it was impossible to establish what that something was. “I’m not sure, Mma,” she replied. “The name is a bit familiar, but…but, I’m not sure.”
* * *
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HER HESITATION was in part occasioned by a concern that