Suddenly a blue car drew up opposite the two girls. Mma Ramotswe stiffened and watched as the driver leant over the passenger seat and opened the front door. Nandira got in, and her friend got into the back. Mma Ramotswe started the engine of the little white van and pulled out of the school car park, just as the blue car drew away from the school. She followed at a safe distance, but ready to close the gap between them if there was any chance of losing them. She would not repeat yesterday’s mistake and see Nandira vanish into thin air.
The blue car was taking its time, and Mma Ramotswe did not have to strain to keep up. They drove past the Sun Hotel and made their way towards the Stadium roundabout. There they turned in towards town and drove past the hospital and the Anglican Cathedral towards the Mall. Shops, thought Mma Ramotswe. They’re just going shopping; or are they? She had seen teenagers meeting one another after school in places like the Botswana Book Centre. They called it “hanging around,” she believed. They stood about and chatted and cracked jokes and did everything except buy something. Perhaps Nandira was going off to hang around with this Jack.
The blue car nosed into a parking place near the President Hotel. Mma Ramotswe parked several cars away and watched as the two girls got out of the car, accompanied by an older woman, presumably the mother of the other girl. She said something to her daughter, who nodded, and then detached herself from the girls and walked off in the direction of the hardware stores.
Nandira and her friend walked past the steps of the President Hotel and then slowly made their way up to the Post Office. Mma Ramotswe followed them casually, stopping to look at a rack of African print blouses which a woman was displaying in the square.
“Buy one of these Mma,” said the woman. “Very good blouses. They never run. Look, this one I’m wearing has been washed ten, twenty times, and hasn’t run. Look.”
Mma Ramotswe looked at the woman’s blouse—the colours had certainly not run. She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the two girls. They were looking in the shoe shop window, taking their time about wherever they were going.
“You wouldn’t have my size,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I need a very big blouse.”
The trader checked her rack and then looked at Mma Ramotswe again.
“You’re right,” she said. “You are too big for these blouses. Far too big.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “But they are nice blouses, Mma, and I hope you sell them to some nice small person.”
She moved on. The girls had finished with the shoe shop and were strolling up towards the Book Centre. Mma Ramotswe had been right; they were planning to hang about.
THERE WERE very few people in the Botswana Book Centre. Three or four men were paging through magazines in the periodical section, and one or two people were looking at books. The assistants were leaning over the counters, gossiping idly, and even the flies seemed lethargic.
Mma Ramotswe noticed that the two girls were at the far end of the shop, looking at a shelf of books in the Setswana section. What were they doing there? Nandira could be learning Setswana at school, but she would hardly be likely to be buying any of the schoolbooks or biblical commentaries that dominated that section. No, they must be waiting for somebody.
Mma Ramotswe walked purposefully to the African section and reached for a book. It was The Snakes of Southern Africa, and it was well illustrated. She gazed at a picture of a short brown snake and asked herself whether she had seen one of these. Her cousin had been bitten by a snake like that years ago, when they were children, and had come to no harm. Was that the snake? She looked at the text below the picture and read. It could well have been the same snake, because it was described as nonvenomous and not at all aggressive. But it had attacked her cousin; or had her cousin attacked it? Boys attacked snakes. They threw stones at them and seemed unable to leave them alone. But she was not sure whether Putoke had done that; it was so long ago, and she could not really remember.
She looked over at the girls. They were standing there, talking to one another again, and one of them was laughing. Some story about boys, thought Mma Ramotswe. Well, let them laugh; they’ll realise soon enough that the whole subject of men was not very funny. In a few years’ time it would be tears, not laughter, thought Mma Ramotswe grimly.
She returned to her perusal of The Snakes of Southern Africa. Now this was a bad snake, this one. There it was. Look at the head! Ow! And those evil eyes! Mma Ramotswe shuddered, and read: “The above picture is of an adult male black mamba, measuring 1.87 metres. As is shown in the distribution map, this snake is to be found throughout the region, although it has a certain preference for open veld. It differs from the green mamba, both in distribution, habitat, and toxicity of venom. The snake is one of the most dangerous snakes to be found in Africa, being outranked in this respect only by the Gaboon Viper, a rare, forest-dwelling snake found in certain parts of the eastern districts of Zimbabwe.
“Accounts of attacks by black mambas are often exaggerated, and stories of the snake’s attacking men on galloping horses, and overtaking them, are almost certainly apocryphal. The mamba can manage a considerable speed over a very short distance, but could not compete with a horse. Nor are the stories of virtually instantaneous death necessarily true, although the action of the venom can be speeded if the victim of the bite should panic, which of course he often does on realising that he has been bitten by a mamba.
“In one reliably recorded case, a twenty-six-year-old man in good physical condition sustained a mamba bite on his right ankle after he had inadvertently stepped on the snake in the bush. There was no serum immediately available, but the victim possibly succeeded in draining off some of the venom when he inflicted deep cuts on the site of the bite (not a course of action which is today regarded as helpful). He then walked some four miles through the bush to seek help and was admitted to hospital within two hours. Antivenom was administered and the victim survived unscathed; had it been a puff-adder bite, of course, there would have been considerable necrotic damage within that time and he may even have lost the leg …”
Mma Ramotswe paused. One leg. He would need to have an artificial leg. Mr Patel. Nandira. She looked up sharply. The snake book had so absorbed her that she had not been paying attention to the girls and now—where were they?—gone. They were gone.
She pushed The Snakes of Southern Africa back onto the shelf and rushed out into the square. There were more people about now, as many people did their shopping in the latter part of the afternoon, to escape the heat. She looked about her. There were some teenagers a little way away, but they were boys. No, there was a girl. But was it Nandira? No. She looked in the other direction. There was a man parking his bicycle under a tree and she noticed that the bicycle had a car aerial on it. Why?
She set off in the direction of the President Hotel. Perhaps the girls had merely gone back to the car to rejoin the mother, in which case, everything would be all right. But when she got to the car park, she saw the blue car going out at the other end, with just the mother in it. So the girls were still around, somewhere in the square.
Mma Ramotswe went back to the steps of the President Hotel and looked out over the square. She moved her gaze systematically—as Clovis Andersen recommended—looking at each group of people, scrutinising each knot of shoppers outside each shop window. There was no sign of the girls. She noticed the woman with the rack of blouses. She had a packet of some sort in her hand and was extracting what looked like a Mopani worm from within it.
“Mopani worms?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
The woman turned round and looked at her.
“Yes.” She offered the bag to Mma Ramotswe, who helped herself to one of the dried tree worms and popped it into her mouth. It was a delicacy she simply could not resist.
“You must see everything that goes on, Mma,” she said, as she swallowed the worm. “Standing here like this.”
The woman laughed. “I see everybody. Everybody.”
“Did you see two girls come out o
f the Book Centre?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “One Indian girl and one African girl. The Indian one about so high?”
The trader picked out another worm from her bag and popped it into her mouth.
“I saw them,” she said. “They went over to the cinema. Then they went off somewhere else. I didn’t notice where they were going.”
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “You should be a detective,” she said.
“Like you,” said the woman simply.
This surprised Mma Ramotswe. She was quite well-known, but she had not necessarily expected a street trader to know who she was. She reached into her handbag and extracted a ten-pula note, which she pressed into the woman’s hand.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s a fee from me. And I hope you will be able to help me again some time.”
The woman seemed delighted.
“I can tell you everything,” she said. “I am the eyes of this place. This morning, for example, do you want to know who was talking to whom just over there? Do you know? You’d be surprised if I told you.”
“Some other time,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I’ll be in touch.”
There was no point in trying to find where Nandira had got to now, but there was every point in following up the information that she already had. So Mma Ramotswe went to the cinema and enquired as to the time of that evening’s performance, which is what she concluded the two girls had been doing. Then she returned to the little white van and drove home, to prepare herself for an early supper and an outing to the cinema. She had seen the name of the film; it was not something that she wanted to sit through, but it had been at least a year since she had been to the cinema and she found that she was looking forward to the prospect.
Mr Patel telephoned before she left.
“My daughter has said that she is going out to see a friend about some homework,” he said peevishly. “She is lying to me again.”
“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I’m afraid that she is. But I know where she’s going and I shall be there, don’t you worry.”
“She is going to see this Jack?” shouted Mr Patel. “She is meeting this boy?”
“Probably,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But there is no point in your upsetting yourself. I will give you a report tomorrow.”
“Early-early, please,” said Mr Patel. “I am always up at six, sharp-sharp.”
THERE WERE very few people in the cinema when Mma Ramotswe arrived. She chose a seat in the penultimate row, at the back. This gave her a good view of the door through which anybody entering the auditorium would have to pass, and even if Nandira and Jack came in after the lights had gone down, it would still be possible for Mma Ramotswe to pick them out.
Mma Ramotswe recognised several of the customers. Her butcher arrived shortly after she did, and he and his wife gave her a friendly wave. Then there was one of the teachers from the school and the woman who ran the aerobics class at the President Hotel. Finally there was the Catholic bishop, who arrived by himself and ate popcorn loudly in the front row.
Nandira arrived five minutes before the first part of the programme was about to start. She was by herself, and she stood for a moment in the door, looking around her. Mma Ramotswe felt her eyes rest on her, and she looked down quickly, as if inspecting the floor for something. After a moment or two she looked up again, and saw that the girl was still looking at her. Mma Ramotswe looked down at the floor again, and saw a discarded ticket, which she reached down to pick up.
Nandira walked purposefully across the auditorium to Mma Ramotswe’s row and sat down in the seat next to her.
“Evening, Mma,” she said politely. “Is this seat taken?”
Mma Ramotswe looked up, as if surprised.
“There is nobody there,” she said. “It is quite free.”
Nandira sat down.
“I am looking forward to this film,” she said pleasantly. “I have wanted to see it for a long time.”
“Good,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is nice to see a film that you’ve always wanted to see.”
There was a silence. The girl was looking at her, and Mma Ramotswe felt quite uncomfortable. What would Clovis Andersen have done in such circumstances? She was sure that he said something about this sort of thing, but she could not quite remember what it was. This was where the subject crowded you, rather than the other way round.
“I saw you this afternoon,” said Nandira. “I saw you at Maru-a-Pula.”
“Ah, yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I was waiting for somebody.”
“Then I saw you in the Book Centre,” Nandira continued. “You were looking at a book.”
“That’s right,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I was thinking of buying a book.”
“Then you asked Mma Bapitse about me,” Nandira said quietly. “She’s that trader. She told me that you were asking about me.”
Mma Ramotswe made a mental note to be careful of Mma Bapitse in the future.
“So, why are you following me?” asked Nandira, turning in her seat to stare at Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Ramotswe thought quickly. There was no point in denying it, and she may as well try to make the most of a difficult situation. So she told Nandira about her father’s anxieties and how he had approached her.
“He wants to find out whether you’re seeing boys,” she said. “He’s worried about it.”
Nandira looked pleased.
“Well, if he’s worried, he’s only got himself to blame if I keep going out with boys.”
“And are you?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Are you going out with lots of boys?”
Nandira hesitated. Then, quietly: “No. Not really.”
“But what about this Jack?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Who’s he?”
For a moment it seemed as if Nandira was not going to reply. Here was another adult trying to pry into her private life, and yet there was something about Mma Ramotswe that she trusted. Perhaps she could be useful; perhaps …
“Jack doesn’t exist,” she said quietly. “I made him up.”
“Why?”
Nandira shrugged. “I want them—my family—to think I’ve got a boyfriend,” she said. “I want them to think there’s somebody I chose, not somebody they thought right for me.” She paused. “Do you understand that?”
Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. She felt sorry for this poor, overprotected girl, and imagined just how in such circumstances one might want to pretend to have a boyfriend.
“Yes,” she said, laying a hand on Nandira’s arm. “I understand.”
Nandira fidgeted with her watchstrap.
“Are you going to tell him?” she asked.
“Well, do I have much choice?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “I can hardly say that I’ve seen you with a boy called Jack when he doesn’t really exist.”
Nandira sighed. “Well, I suppose I’ve asked for it. It’s been a silly game.” She paused. “But once he realises that there’s nothing in it, do you think that he might let me have a bit more freedom? Do you think that he might let me live my life for a little without having to tell him how I spend every single minute?”
“I could try to persuade him,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I don’t know whether he’ll listen to me. But I could try.”
“Please do,” said Nandira. “Please try.”
They watched the film together, and both enjoyed it. Then Mma Ramotswe drove Nandira back in her tiny white van, in a companionable silence, and dropped her at the gate in the high white wall. The girl stood and watched as the van drove off, and then she turned and pressed the bell.
“Patel place here. What do you want?”
“Freedom,” she muttered under her breath, and then, more loudly: “It’s me, Papa. I’m home now.”
MMA RAMOTSWE telephoned Mr Patel early the next morning, as she had promised to do. She explained to him that it would be better for her to speak to him at home, rather than to explain matters over the telephone.
“You’ve got bad news for me,” he said, his voice rising. “You are going to be tel
ling me something bad-bad. Oh my God! What is it?”
Mma Ramotswe reassured him that the news was not bad, but she still found him looking anxious when she was shown into his study half an hour later.
“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. “Because 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!”