Frankie’s Choice, cont’d

Chapter One, Part II

Thanks to the kind comments of readers — and somewhat to my astonishment — the first instalment of Frankie’s Choice was well received and so I’ll now publish the continuation twice per week. Any feedback on character development and pacing would be most welcome. For those new to Frankie’s Choice, the first instalment is here.

Half an hour after leaving Alberic in Coffee Corner, Frankie was sitting in the local park under the still-bare branches of an old oak tree, her head bent forward as she looked at various amusing clips presented by the StrokeTime algorithm on her phone. Her obsession with the tall lean actor Tim Hunkstone meant there were multiple clips of him in various roles, often patched together by other Hunkstone fans and accompanied by whatever soundtracks the maker had felt appropriate.

Hunkstone was her ideal of manly perfection: a finely-featured face that was nearly always smiling and with piercing blue eyes, more blue even than her own, that made her feel as if he was looking at her directly. She particularly appreciated the pictures of him bare-chested that displayed his slender yet not quite androgenous physique. He was reputed to have an extremely large male appendage; a fact that was frequently uppermost in her mind when at night she lay in bed imagining him beside her. Not a small number of…