Welcome to Ferry Lane Market - Nicola May Page 0,3

need his annual cat flu injection. The fact that she had told Lydia he always got a weird reaction afterwards was, on the other hand, a downright stinker. But as Kara didn’t know how she’d feel once she’d done what she needed to do, rather than take the chance of getting upset at work, she had decided that the best tactic was to just not be there.

With funds so tight, she couldn’t afford to take James Bond to the vet any more unless it was an emergency. Her old family cat, Bawcock, had lived to the venerable age of twenty-two and he’d never had an injection in his life. The one and only time he’d had to go to the vet was when his ear was hanging off after a fight with the next door’s tabby. Kara’s mother had insisted he be treated right away, but Kara’s grandad Harry had been round and said that the battered moggy was as brave as old Tom Bawcock, his namesake, and that animals healed themselves quite ably. Grandad Harry would have been quite happy to clean up the raw bits with disinfectant and put a plaster over them. But Doryty Moon had got her way, as she always did. The beloved pet was patched up and to this day Kara still hadn’t found out who the old tom’s namesake was and what he had done that was so great.

Chapter 3

Frank’s was a stand-alone oblong brick building located right on the estuary-wall edge. It had a gaily striped awning and a pink neon sign saying plainly, Frank’s Café. To the right of the building there was a roped-off concrete area housing fixed wooden table benches with red and white sunshades for use in the summer months. Now that the weather was warming up, the side hatch where you’d queue for delicious home-made Cornish ice creams would soon be opening up, too. At the end of the day, seven days a week, market stallholders and visitors alike would companionably unwind at Frank’s and watch the sun go down over the sea as boats of all shapes and sizes plied the busy waterway.

Kara loved looking down to the estuary mouth, where the left point of Crowsbridge, scattered with its white dots of houses and open green fields, stared almost belligerently across at the rugged cliffs and big posh houses of Hartmouth Head. From Frank’s, the gap out to sea appeared just a few metres across. Up close, it became a wide window to the infinite ocean stretching ahead.

The café wasn’t licensed, but Big Frank Brady, the muscly tattooed Irishman who ran the place, brewed his own magnificent dark ale, serving it in iced-tea bottles straight from the under-counter fridge. His sloe-infused gin also passed perfectly as a blackcurrant cordial; poured on ice with refreshing tonic water, it made for a perfect illegal summer cocktail. Inside the café was an old-fashioned jukebox, where hits mainly from the 1950s and 1960s blared inside and out, rain or shine, in an attempt to encourage customers to come in. In fact, Big Frank had been known to turn the volume up full blast if he suspected anyone of even daring to walk past and across the road to the Ferryboat, the white-painted pub on the corner.

Frank’s was set out in the style of an old-school American diner, sporting red leather booths, white Formica tables and a jazzily tiled floor. There were six high metal stools where you could prop yourself up at the bar and, if not wanting some hooky booze, you could choose one of the milkshakes, hot drinks, or plentiful juices on offer. As for the snack menu, everything on it was freshly made and moreish. The walls were adorned with black-and-white prints of the Hollywood stars of yesteryear. Kara particularly loved the one of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – the famous one in which she is wearing a gorgeous, tight black dress and seductively holding a cigarette holder. Kara sadly acknowledged that even if she signed up a personal trainer of great ability for the rest of her life, she could never look like that. Her double D-cup boobs would not fit on such a tiny frame, for instead of being blessed with Audrey’s waiflike figure, her own body sported ample thighs that led up to a large, round bottom. With a slim waist, she was in perfect hourglass proportion – just not the proportions she’d have chosen. The older locals of the estuary town