"I do not know," Ruby simply said.
She was raised by a father who liked her and her sister enough to stay with them. So maybe she had had it easy. Her mother was at home her whole youth, with morning breakfast, afternoon tea with a cookie plus a admiring eye for every ugly drawing she made and a listening ear for any equation she did not know how to solve. Around five o'clock her father would always come home, just in time to cut the meat for dinner. It all seemed so safe. Still, she felt that something was wrong, even though she could not wrap her head around it.
The age of cellphones was slowly starting to come. Ruby had a gigantic Motorola that you could flip open and ran on credit. Usually she spent all her money on gas for her moped and since she did not have a job, she often asked her father if she could send a message with his phone to her boyfriend. Usually her dad allowed her to. Sometimes she could even call her boyfriend. Her father had a Nokia 3210. It had rubber buttons and the thing was kind of cute, because it was so small compared to all the other devices she knew. It was New Year's Eve, Ruby`s mother was at a friend and her sister had locked herself in her room. There was nothing on TV and once again she found herself without credit. Sighing, she therefore for the umpteenth filed an application to send a message at her father. `No problem` he said. In those days, her father switched his phone off when he was at home, so on Ruby`s special request, he turned it back on.
"Here you go," he grumbled, continuing to read his newspaper.
She ran towards her bedroom,with the cute device. It started beeping. The screen read: "You have one new message." She laughed and thought: 'Who would be calling my father now ?! "She decided to listen to the voicemail. In the three seconds that followed, Ruby lost her youthful naivety.
"Hi L. S. here"
Ruby heard a husky female voice, which carried a degree of hurt in it that gave away a great lack of self-esteem. It was the voice of a woman that because of her low self-esteem lets her hair stay long, even though she is 40 already, as she is afraid that her stupid husband will leave her otherwise. She continued:
"I wanted to let you know that our coffee appointment can not go on this afternoon`followed by a cheeky giggle. `I'm going to help my mother with the groceries`. A happy new year already! "
In one second Ruby understood everything. Like a row of dominos, this voicemail tumbled down everything that she thought her parents were. Hysterically, she tried to erase the voice, kept pressing all the buttons, as if she was possessed. Ruby totally forgot to text her boyfriend.
After weeping into her pillow, Ruby walked back to the living room. As always, her father sad there behind his newspaper.
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