Viv is the mad hatter of our little trio. Currently, she was rocking green streaks, which I thought was pretty cool but would look hideous in my own auburn shoulder-length hair. She’s a very nice girl with a tall willowy build, a dark complexion courtesy of her West Indies heritage and a bob of corkscrew curls that she likes to dye new and different colors. She tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder as if the gesture added weight to her argument.įee is Fiona Felton, my cousin Viv’s apprentice. “No, no, I insist you take it,” Viv said. Besides, I was quite sure I was going to sprout mold if I didn’t get some sunshine, and soon. Three solid weeks of rain will do that to a girl. Having been raised in the States and hailing most recently from Florida, I was being pushed just to the right of crazy by this late September weather. I’ve always loved it and found the bright blue-and-white-striped awning and matching blue shutters on the windows above to be cheerful, but even they couldn’t defeat the never-ending gloom that seemed to descend upon our section of London. Our shop is nestled in the midst of Portobello Road and takes up the bottom floor of the three-story white building that our grandmother bought over forty years ago. Gray clouds, gray sheets of rain, gray fog filling the streets and alleyways, gray, gray, gray.

I stood at the counter of Mim’s Whims, the hat shop my cousin Vivian Tremont and I had inherited from our grandmother Mim, and I gazed out the window.

At the Drop of a Hat by Jenn McKinlay