This is part of the #MAYnia challenge run by the Hive account@freewritehouse. Today I have written 1949 words. Some of them were written using the following prompts

Today's Maynia prompt: opal
@freewritehouse/maynia-day-fifteen
The Daily Freewrite prompt: designer drugs
@mariannewest/day-936-5-minute-freewrite-thursday-prompt-designer-drugs

_{_{If you have nothing better to do you can read my previous “chapters”: _{One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen}}}
…

Alba watched her uncle demolish the fish and chips with a mixture of admiration and disgust.

"Are you sure you don't want any?" Howard said, thrusting the paper wrapped food at her. She shook her head.

"No, thanks Uncle. I don't eat fish."

"Ah," Howard said. "You're missing out, there."

She didn't say anything. Even before she went vegetarian Alba hadn't been a fan of fish. She remembered at school once being served a fish that still had its head attached. The cloudy, opel eye stared up at her from the plate, daring her to stick a fork into its over cooked pale flesh. She had vomited all over the plate. Miss Grange, a rather small stern woman who taught Religious Studies, was on lunch duty that day. She made Alba clear up the vomit and then made her fetch another plate and eat it.

She had hated fish and Miss Grange in equal measures after that day.

After the last school reunion - another one she had “accidently” forgotten to go to - she had had an email from her old friend Zara. She said the buzz of the evening was that Miss Grange had lost her job. She had been caught selling designer drugs to one of the other teachers.

It just goes to show, Alba thought, you don't really know what people are like. What they show on the outside, isn't always the truth.

Howard was like that. Not that Alba could imagine Howard selling - or even taking drugs. Aunt Miny, definitely. Back in the day, Alba imagined Mindy would have smoked her fair share of weed. Possibly, taken a few trips too. But Howard, he was too straight laced. Too old-school-suit-and-tie. But he had a side to him that was completely unreadable to Alba. Just when she thought she had him pegged he would surprise her by doing something completely out of character.

A couple of years ago, before she started her university course, she took a year off. She got it in her head she wanted to come to Humbuckle-on-Sea and write. So she rented a room in a flat on the outskirts of Humpbuckle-on-Sea and found a part time job in a bar. Most of the day she would spend her time walking the coastal path, hoping inspiration would hit. It didn’t take her long before she realised that inspiration didn’t really work like that. If you wanted to write it wouldn’t happen by taking long walks by the sea. You had to sit down and make words come out of your head and onto paper - or in her case the screen of her laptop. She locked herself in her room with some energy drinks and some food - mostly crap like crips and chocolate, with a Pot Noodle on the side - and began to write. At least that was the plan. But she didn’t write anything. At least nothing she could bear to re-read. In the end she threw her laptop against the wall, broke it and burst into tears.

She decided she needed grounding. Someone who would give her a big hug, a cup of tea and tell her how she could do whatever she wanted to do. That person was - and had always been - her Aunt Mindy.

She had left her room and walked out of the horrible flatshare, blinking the brightness of the day and went to the local newsagents where she bought a top up for her phone walked along the promenade and found an empty bench overlooking the sea and called Aunt Mindy.

“Hello,” the warm calm voice of Uncle Howard answered.

“Hello, favourite uncle,” she said. He was her only uncle, and she his only niece and they played the game they always played.

“Hello, favourite niece,” he said. “How’s the writing going?”

“Hmmm,” she said. “Not great. Is Mindy there? I really need some Aunty time.”

“You know,” Howard said. If he was disappointed he didn’t let it show in his voice. “She isn’t. She’s at some retreat up North. Trying to find herself, or somesuch. You know.”

“Yes, I know.” Aunt Mindy’s hippy-like tendencies always seemed out of tune with Howard’s more down to earth practical nature. But it seemed to work for both of them. “Okay. It doesn’t matter. I just called on the off chance. Tell her I called, won’t you?”

“Of course.” There was a pause and then, “But I’m not doing anything. It’s very quiet here, without your Aunt. I don’t suppose you’d do me a favour and hang out with me?”

Alba had hesitated. She loved her Uncle. He was a nice guy. But she wasn’t sure if that was what she needed right now. Had he picked up on her despondency? Was he offering to spend some time with her, just to try to make her feel better. Probably.

“Please,” he continued. “I’m bored and I want some fun.”

He sounded, suddenly, like a little boy. The way he said it made Alba laugh, even though she wasn’t feeling in the mood for laughing.

“Oh, okay. What did you have in mind?”

“Never mind. You leave that up to me. A surprise. I’ll pick you up in… an hour and a half.”

Alba had hung up. Walked back along the promenade, grabbed a bag of chips - from the same stand by which they stood now, she realised - and ate them as she walked back to her flat.

The broken laptop stared at her from the floor of her room where she’d left it. She wouldn’t be doing any writing now. Even if she had the inspiration, she wouldn’t be able to afford a new laptop. What a stupid thing to do.

She waited for Howard, sitting on the wall outside the house that had been badly converted into two flats. She didn’t want him going inside. It was a dump and she didn’t want him feeling sorry for her, or offering to give her money or anything.

When Howard pulled up in a red E-Type Jaguar Alba almost fell off the wall.

“I didn’t know you owned a Jag!” she said after walking around it, whistling appreciatively.

“I don’t,” he said. “I rented it for the day. A friend of my friend rents them out. Always fancied taking one of them out. But Mindy isn’t a big fan of cars as you may remember.”

Alba did remember. Mindy had had an accident not long after she had passed her test and had never driven again. She was a reluctant passenger and preferred other forms of transport. Trains being her favourite.

They drove out of Humpbuckle-on-Sea, winding their way along the coastal path up to the cliffs that overlooked the ocean. Alba felt better already. They talked but not about writing, or flat-shares or Howard’s work - whatever that was, something in the City - but about plays, television programmes they had enjoyed, or hated and books they had read or were meaning to. Howard was a hoarder of books. His car - a boring-but-reliable Volvo sat outside while their garage was home to books Howard had bought with the intention of reading… but hadn’t got round to. When he had read a book it ended up on one of the bookshelves in the house, if he enjoyed it or in a charity shop if he did not.

Howard took them off of the coastal road and into countryside. And it wasn’t until they pulled into an old airfield that Alba asked again what they were doing.

“Something else I have always wanted to do, but have never done,” he said.

They were greeted by a very tall thin man. He reminded Alba of a series of paintings she had seen by an artist whose name she had forgotten. All the men had long spindly legs that reminded a younger Alba of a daddy longlegs.

“What are we doing, here?” Alba asked again.

The man laughed and said to Howard, “You haven’t told her.”

“A surprise,” Howard said.

The man took them to a large hanger and inside was the largest collection of small aircraft Alba had ever seen.

“You are going up in that,” he pointed to a Spitfire.

“My dad flew one,” Howard said. “In the war. He never went near a plane once the war ended. Never talked about the war. I’ve always wanted to fly one.”

The man looked at Howard.

“Just to be clear,” he said. “I’ll be doing the flying.”

“Of course. Of course.”

They went up one at a time. Howard insisted Alba go first. It was an experience she would never forget. She had never been in such a small space, so high up. She felt vulnerable with the seemingly thin and old metal keeping her from falling to the ground. And it was so noisy! But so thrilling.

When Howard had finished they each had their photographs taken in the cockpit and then he took them back down to Humpbuckle-on-Sea.

“Thank you, Howard,” Alba said. “That was just what I needed.”

“We’re not done, yet,” Howard said.

“No?”

“No. I want you to take me clubbing. I haven’t been on a dancefloor this century I don’t think. Not of a club. Been to a wedding or two. I want you to show me a good time.”

So Alba took him to the only club she felt comfortable in. A small gay club located in the industrial estate at the other end of town. She had been worried that he would feel uncomfortable. He wasn’t homophobic, Alba had come out Mindy and Howard before her parents, and they had done precisely what she knew they would: hugged her, told her they loved her and then hugged her again. But he just looked so straight. In every sense of the word. But she needn’t of stressed herself. Her uncle had strutted his stuff for four hours and then, when the music stopped and the lights went on, he looked genuinely disappointed.

“I haven’t had that much fun in ages,” he said.

He took them to a truck stop on the main road and they shared a pastry and drank coffee and Alba had at last told Howard about the struggle she had had with writing. That she had made a mistake. She was a fraud. That she should give up.

“We all feel like that, you know,” Howard said. “Well most of us. The good people. We bluff our way through life frightened that we’ll get caught. Even now I struggle to write reports for work, and I’m convinced I’ll reveal myself as the pretender I am.”

They talked some more and then Howard drove her back to her flat.

“You must come up and have lunch on Sunday,” he said, before she left. “Mindy gets back on Saturday night. And she’ll be jealous I’ve seen so much of you.”

When he picked her up on Sunday morning it was in the Volvo.

“There’s something for you,” he said pointing to a parcel in the well of the passenger side. “Don’t open it now. And don’t insult me by refusing it.”

When she opened it later, back in her flat, after a wonderful Sunday lunch, she found a brand new laptop.

“Right,” Howard said, bringing Alba out of her deep thoughts. He threw the wrapper in the bin, like a basket ball player. “Time to go and check out that bookshop.”

“No buying books, Howard,” Mindy said. She and Jeff, the reporter, had been talking about Humpuckle-on-Sea as she remembered it and what had changed. “You have more than enough you haven’t read. We’ll need another garage if you buy any more.”

“Yes, dear,” Howard winked at Alba.

…