The Stopover

By Herbert Howard Jones

Dana Kellna had devoted her whole adult life to the skies as a flight attendant, or as she preferred to say, as an air hostess, and had fallen madly in love with airline pilot - Lex Favori. They even lived together for a while. Although he was half Italian, his use of the language was poor, but that didn’t stop Dana embracing Italy and Sicily, and in fact she made frequent stops there. Sadly it wasn’t long before Dana and Lex had a serious falling out and Lex deserted her. It was a terrible shock!

Coincidently, her uncle Norman had purchased a bar in Catania, Sicily which British army ex-pats would use as a friendly watering hole. It was quite handy for Dana who would occasionally drop in every few months and help out. The bar, Grammaticos, was like home from home and Dana soon got to know the locale and the locals got to know her. She became especially friendly with her uncle’s half-Italian wife Maria who was a kind helpful woman.

One day, Dana and her best friend and fellow colleague Margo organised a sort of break in Catania for their airline crew. It was really like a Stopover, a term used by crews to describe a longer than average stay in any part of the world. But it would be impractical to expect Dana’s uncle Norman to put them all up, and so they got a discounted hotel suite down the road.

Dana knew that the girls would have a good time. They were a bunch of attractive high spirited professional young women who were determined to get the most out of life. Invariably this meant going out and about, playing the field, and generally experiencing what the world had to offer. And Catania with it’s night life and bars and restaurants had everything a tourist might ever want or need. It was just a shame that Dana’s ex, Lex Favori suddenly turned up with two middle-aged women in tow and stopped Dana in her tracks!

Dana’s cabin crew chums thought she was foolish to entertain Lex after what he had put her through. But she had always nurtured a soft spot for him despite his apparent past cruelty. There were also certain burning questions she wanted answers to such as, why did Lex really leave her in the first place? Was it for another woman? Or was it because, as he said at the time, she was smothering him?

Whatever the reason, here he was back again. Dana didn’t know what to make of it. Not only had he changed his name, but the two ladies he was with were quite besotted with him. Or rather, one was. The other was in Sicily to start a business or find one for sale. And what better person to ask for advice than a person like Dana who was familiar with Sicilian customs and local law.

So against her better judgement Dana found herself being roped into Lex’s little circle and gradually certain things from the past came to light. She starts finding answers to old questions and eventually learns what Lex’s true agenda is. Frankly, it surprises her, and if she is honest, it actually gives her a smidgeon of hope again!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Herbert Howard Jones
• Release date: Nov 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005469528

Herbert Howard Jones

HERBERT HOWARD JONES grew up in Notting Hill, London in the sixties. He went to a boarding school in Norfolk and then local schools including Sloane School where crime writer John Creasy attended near the King's Road. When he left school he got numerous jobs, including as a porter at the BBC London, working as a jewellery assembler in a factory in Hatton Garden and also in a number of roles at a showbiz solicitor's office where he was a trainee legal executive and ran errands for a few of the British movie and music names of the time.He is a creative spirit who also likes dabbling in music and art himself. When he was in the jewellery business he personally made over ten thousand 14 carat gold gate bracelets which was a great learning experience for him. However, he was more interested in media and always wanted to write suspense books with a melodramatic element and so spent years reading them and working on various projects. He is also interested in romantic and fantasy fiction.But meeting people has always inspired him the most and he has had the good fortune to meet quite a few interesting people. He was personally friends with horror writer, Denis Wheatley's housekeeper when she lived in Blackheath, and knew poet John Pudney who lived nearby before he passed. One of the most interesting people that he met was the daughter of the Captain of the Titanic with whom he had tea in her cottage up in Suffolk. Miss Smith was a lady with a big personality and a very interesting home. She was surrounded with Titanic memorabilia wherever you looked. Jones was only a boy at the time and didn't appreciate the significance of all this stuff, but regrets not quizzing her on the catastrophic event which has forever featured large in shipping folklore!PERSONAL MESSAGE:I WANT TO EXPRESS my gratitude to readers who have bothered to download my books. I put a lot of effort into them and also design my own covers, and so it is a wonderful reward to get a download. Every author on this platform will be grateful for them because writing can be a lonely and thankless task. It is only the reader who makes it all worth while, and so thanks very much again.HHJ

Book preview

The Stopover

Herbert Howard Jones

Copyright © Herbert Howard Jones 2020

The right of Herbert Howard Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Opinions expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the author’s own views.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Artwork by Herbert Howard Jones

Contents

An Old Friend

The Proposition

The Captain Comes Clean

Annoying Self-Pity

Off The Beaten Track

Little Voice Inside Her

More Question Marks

Heart To Heart

A White Flag

Getting There

A Third Party

Getting Serious

Bit Of Confusion

Not Very Comfortable

Something To Think About

Still Stuck In The Mud

When Decisions Go Awry

Looking For Answers

An Old Wish Come True

A Happening

Curious Uncle

Putting The Past behind

Second Time Round

A New Future

About The Author

An Old Friend

Dana lowered her head as she tried to hide her face. It was a case of literally not being able to believe her eyes, but her vision was too acute to be doubted. There he was, the dashing Captain Lex Favori strolling by the little table where Dana sat with her airline colleagues having a coffee in the airport café bar.

She smoothed down her strawberry blonde hair, now rather self-conscious in case he had seen her, and glanced up at the large airport arrivals board. An Alitalia flight from Rome to Catania, where flight attendant Dana was currently on stopover, had just landed not twenty-minutes ago. A handful of passengers had just disembarked including Lex Favori, who looked so unruffled that he might have been travelling deadhead, as a passenger pilot. He was carrying a little brown briefcase with him and as always, caught the eyes of the women as he confidently passed by.

Dana grimaced. He was such an annoyingly good-looking, immaculately turned out showoff that he clearly thought he was God’s gift. She kept her head down. Catania in Sicily was the last place she expected to see him, so what was he doing here? If you were to find Lex anywhere, it would be piloting commercial craft in the Americas or the more fashionable parts of Europe. Catania was like the Outer Hebrides to him!

‘You okay?’ Margot, her flight attendant colleague and best friend asked, sitting opposite her. ‘It looks like you’ve just seen a ghost!’

Beautiful hazel eyed Dana Kellna actually managed to look ugly for precisely three seconds as she said, ‘I think I have!’

Margot nodded reflectively. ‘It wasn’t that dishy captain with the slightly greying hair was it? It wasn’t Lex your ex, was it? I couldn’t keep my eyes off his…’

‘Margot! Yes, it was. But he was far too old for me.’

Auburn haired, slightly plump Margot grinned. ‘Well if you don’t want him anymore, pass him around!’

‘Hmm!’

‘What was he like in the feathers?’

‘Margot, is that all you think about? I already told you it was all great, but it came to an end. Sadly. You should try settling down yourself instead of being so slutty!’

Margot put her hand on Dana’s wrist. ‘Oh, listen to you! Look, what’s the point of travelling around the world if you don’t sample what’s on offer?’

Dana shrugged. ‘If you want him, help yourself.’ She checked her watch. They were having coffee as they waited to hook up with some of their other colleagues who worked for Dutch Airline, VLA – the one with the little green logo. Dana had been with them for several years, starting off as a stewardess, and then onboard chef and working her way up to general flight attendant. Not a locational leap, but a significant leap in salary.

At Catania, they had hired a large private taxi which was going to whisk them off to the Hotel Romero for a week of well-deserved rest. It had been a nightmare organising, taking into account all the different plane schedules, but Dana and Margot had pulled it off. Colleagues both on layover and stopover had been invited and they expected at least eight girls in all.

But already two more had arrived, having managed to deadhead or hitch a ride on Alitalia. Fortunately, Lex was no longer in sight, and so Dana stood up to greet them. ‘Hi girls!

They all hugged, like a bunch of sorority seniors who hadn’t seen each other for ages, which was actually only a couple of weeks. Then the other four turned up shortly afterwards and it was like a happy reunion. There were even tears of joy, but more out of excitement for the anticipated few days of pure partying.

‘The taxi is outside all ready to go!’ Dana told them. ‘And there will be snacks and vino on board. You’ll all be drunk out of your skulls by the time we reach the hotel!’

They cheered at that which attracted the glances of several passengers in the terminal. Air hostesses misbehaving – unheard of! Then as a loud chatty group they all trouped through to the electronic exit doors as they followed Dana and Margot out to the awaiting taxi.

Dana’s mind went back to her apparent sighting of Lex Favori. Or was it another man with a similar appearance? Two of the girls had just travelled on the aircraft that Lex had apparently been on, so she would quiz them later.

As they walked Dana recalled her last conversation with Lex, all those months ago. They had been a happy couple living together. Then he changed. He started complaining of feeling smothered and needed some time to think. However, it soon became obvious that he really wanted was to move on with his life without her. This was a bombshell of a shock as they had carefully and meticulously planned the rest of their lives together. To say that her heart had been broken was an understatement.

Lex had been quite mechanically insensitive about it. He really wanted out, and he made her feel that what was wrong with their relationship was her fault. She, according to him, smothered him and this both shocked and surprised her.

Once she knew for certain that he was going to leave her, Dana realised that she too needed to get away. As she didn’t have any strings in England, apart from her mother and estranged father, she decided to change country altogether. So she plumped for Sicily, Catania specifically, but stayed with the same airline. Lex was a self-employed contractor within the industry and so worked for a number of airlines. But the chances of their paths crossing was small though still possible.

However, by an amazing coincidence, a long lost uncle Norman on her mother’s side, had moved to Catania over twenty years ago. In fact, he ran his own small bar with his wife Maria, and when Dana stumbled across him she didn’t even recognise him.

It was he who recognised her, and so the bar – Grammaticos, became a handy venue Dana frequented when in town. They also served some of the best arancini, fried rice balls and meat sauce in the area. Although the bar had a modern refurbished exterior, the interior reflected local themes and was full of artifacts and quaint pictures.

Dana became very close with her uncle’s wife and would help her out in the bar from time to time. They even provided her with some accommodation so that during any stopovers she didn’t have to stay at a hotel. Fortunately, there were lots of VLA flights to Catania and she managed to assign herself to as many of them as she could.

Catania was a dynamic place which was like a magnet for the young and there were lots of bars to compete with her uncle’s. But Grammaticos was more slow paced and appealed to older visitors. Dana noted that quite a few cabin crew staff from different airlines on stopovers would go there.

But what appealed to Dana almost equally as much were the great clubs, and she did love to dance. She believed it was the reason why she had such a slim figure. Also, the locals knew she worked for the airlines and warmed to her, and Dana became a bit of a mini celebrity. She was known as ‘that air hostess from Birmingham.’

After her twentieth or thirtieth stopover in Catania, she seriously started to consider whether she should settle down there and get another job. But nothing could compare to the pay she was getting with the airline. However, Catania enabled her to put her past and Lex Favori behind her.

Her mother back in Birmingham, England were very active members of a local church and were always trying to get her involved. It was another reasons why she wanted to get away. Of course, she kept in regular contact with them, but life in Birmingham was fast becoming a memory.

Being with an airline often meant that people would seek her out, enquiring about travelling information. It made her think that she could open an office as a tour operator in Catania when she got tired of flying. But that possibility would be for much later.

More to the immediate point, her recent sighting of Lex, was very unsettling. What on earth was he doing in Catania? She just hoped that he wouldn’t turn up either at her hotel or in her uncle’s bar.

****

The hotel Romero couldn’t be more accommodating and Dana and her fellow flight attendants literally took over one of the larger suites. The proprietor laid everything on for them and even gave Dana a super cut rate. There was really nothing stopping Dana and her mates from having a damned good time.

For the next forty-eight hours that was exactly what they did; literally partying like there was no tomorrow. Nothing was out of bounds. They literally took in every worthwhile local venue, bar, dance club, beach hangout, café, clothes shop and street market. And as an added bonus there was plenty of free sun and no need to spend a fortune on sunbeds or saunas.

But as practiced a party-goer as Dana was, she couldn’t shake the forbidding feeling that she was eventually going to bump into Lex again. In fact, it got to the point that whenever they went out, which was every day, she was fearful that she would see him. Such was her concern that she quizzed the girl who had deadheaded on the same flight as Lex.

‘No, his name isn’t Lex,’ the girl said. ‘That’s Mark and he’s so fit for his age.’

‘Mark?’ Dana said confused. ‘No, his name is Lex. How old do you think he is then?’ Dana knew that Lex was forty three.

‘In his late thirties’ the girl replied. ‘Why?’

Dana had shrugged. ‘And he now calls himself Mark?’

‘Yeah, definitely,’ the girl told her. ‘He reminds me of that hunky cowboy in that tv series,’ the girl had said, and the subject was left at that.

Dana was determined that it wasn’t going to spoil her junket. She was also a hundred percent positive that it was Lex and just assumed the girl had got it wrong. However, he did look slightly different from the old Lex that she had known. But what were the odds that she would bump into him around town? Probably slight.

And then, despite her optimism, it happened when she least expected it. Dana had popped into her uncle’s bar to give them a hand during happy hour, drinks at half price, when she came face to face with him. Handsome Lex Favori, the man who had broken her heart. She was stunned but tried to remain in control of herself.

Strangely, he looked right through her as if he had never seen her before in his life.

‘I’ll have a Bud if you’ve got one,’ he said, and smiled a brilliantly white smile at her.

‘All out of stock, I’m afraid,’ she answered trying to keep her cool. ‘Can I offer you a Schlitz or a craft beer like birra Irias, very popular.’

‘Yes, okay,’ he replied. He then turned around and looked towards the quietly playing jukebox as if she was a total stranger. A normal person would have said, ‘Hi Dana, long time no see, how are you!’ But nothing.

Dana got his drink and took the ten euro note he gave her and returned some change. ‘There you are, sir,’ she managed to say. She couldn’t help staring hard at him. She was extremely perplexed to say the least.

‘Thank you!’ he replied.

He took the change and went and managed to find a seat at a table on his own, near two women who were dancing together. Dana couldn’t believe it. Either Lex had decided to act all weird or the man wasn’t Lex. But she had lived with him for two years and knew every nook and cranny of his handsome face, everyday crease and wrinkle. But what was amazing was that he now looked slightly younger, as if he had had some treatments. He didn’t look forty-three anymore, that was for sure.

Was he behaving this way because he felt guilty and was embarrassed at having bumped into her? And if this was the case, was he likely to return to the bar? Unfortunately, Dana couldn’t just leave the bar, as she would have liked, so she moved to a corner where she was less conspicuous. She kept her eyes on him though, as he sat alone at the table.

She chatted with Maria, who was also serving at