The Hat Shop on the Corner Read Free

continue her mother’s work, to finish off the piece to the customer’s satisfaction, to create something with the style and panache that Madeleine Matthews always did?
    ‘You?’
    ‘Yes, I am also a milliner, trained by my mother. I’ve spent most of my childhood and growing years in this place and have often helped her with her work. I studied art and textiles in college and have a very sound knowledge of design. Besides, my mother has left a copy of the design here in this notebook.’
    Maureen Cassidy studied the coloured drawing. ‘Are you sure you’d be able to do it?’
    ‘Of course,’ Ellie assured her. ‘I have worked on many hats.’
    She simply couldn’t let down her mother or this nice woman. Whether it was out of loyalty or love or the big soft heart her mother and friends were always teasing her about, or some moment of utter madness in her bereavement, Ellie found herself promising to complete the hat and have it ready for the customer in less than twenty-four hours. It was a promise she had every intention of keeping.

Chapter Two
    Ellie couldn’t believe that she had made such a rash promise to one of her mother’s customers. What had possessed her? However, holding the stiffened rose-coloured crown in her hand she knew that it was the right thing to do. She wanted to protect not only her mother’s reputation but that of the hat shop. Maureen Cassidy deserved the very best and Ellie was determined to work all night if she had to, to achieve exactly the design her mother had sketched out so precisely in her notepad. She would simply finish the job. She had grown up with the world of millinery, shaping the materials on the hat blocks, sewing and stitching and steaming, bending brim wires and covering them, hand-rolling silk petals and flowers, trimming feathers, fixing ribbons; from her mother she had learned all the skills needed to create the perfect piece of art that was a hat. A hat that would make Mrs Cassidy shine at her daughter’s wedding in three days’ time!
    The street outside was quiet, a few passers-by gazing at the window before hurrying on their way to the bus or the Luas tram as the town began to unwind and the shops shut. She watched as the newsagent’s and Scottie O’Loughlin in the old toy and joke shop pulled down their shutters for the night. Mr Farrell from the antiques shop five doors down checked his keys as he locked up, the newspaper under his arm as he headed up the street. Over the past two years South Anne Street had changed. Property prices had skyrocketed and some of the shops had been forced to close down. A few landlords had refused to renew the leases of their existing tenants, knowing they could sell to the developers for a huge price. The woman from Killiney had closed up her beautiful gift shop further down six months ago, and it still lay idle along with a few others, their shopfronts empty and neglected. Ellie remembered South Anne Street as a bustling thoroughfare with a range of shops run by a myriad of characters, everyone knowing everyone else. It was a shame the way things were changing.
    The street-lights flickered on as one by one the rest of the shops and businesses in the street closed for the night.
    I’d better run out and get something to eat, thought Ellie, pulling on her coat. She raced to the deli near Duke Lane to buy a roll and some soup and a wrap, for she intended to work for the rest of the evening. She was trying to balance her purchases and open the shop door when she noticed the little black cat again, miaowing for attention.
    ‘Scat! Go on, scat!’ she called, trying to shoo it away. But the cat pushed its way in between her feet. Terrified that she would hurt it, with her key stuck in the door and her soup carton wobbling ominously and about to spill all over the two of them, Ellie found herself lurching forward and landing in a heap on her own tiled doorstep as the shop door opened. The soup was saved but the bag with her