Ruby-Jane is the daughter of some folks a few doors up the road from where we live – we don't know them well; I suppose you'd call us 'nodding acquaintances.'
I'll call her Ruby for short and also because that's what most people called her. We'd watched her grow up over the last seven or eight years from awkward shy teenager, to what she now was – a self-assured, tall, willowy young woman just turned twenty-one. She wasn't staggeringly beautiful, but had a good figure and knew how to dress and look good. I know a lot of the young men, and older ones too, lusted after her and she certainly seemed popular.
Once or twice in the past I had helped with the family computer when it needed a little bit of TLC so she knew I was in the computer industry.
My story really starts this morning. My daughter, I live on my own with her, needed to go visit some friends for a couple of days and was just being driven off to the station in a cab while I waited in for a business call due inside the time it would take me to go drop her off at the train station and get back.
As I finished waving her off and just before I turned to go back in Ruby turned the corner and waved. Now like most people I'm a sucker for a pretty girl and in Ruby's case it wasn't difficult to stop and talk for a few minutes.
She bounced down the path towards me moving in a manner that suggested that a bra had not been part of her dressing routine this morning. Lovely if a little off-putting in that it made it quite difficult to concentrate on what she was saying.
"Hi Mr S!"
Now that she's grown up I've asked her to call me Sven, but she still uses the name she gave me when she was growing up.
"Can I ask you a question? "
"Course you can, Ruby."
"You have an iPhone, yes?" She knew I had so she was on a safe bet. "Could you show me something on it please?"
"You'd best come in and we can discuss it a little easier inside, perhaps over a coffee?" I stepped aside and then followed her into the hall-way.
What then followed took me totally by surprise. We're near enough the same height so we stand eye to eye so to speak.