Friday Fragment: Street of Bakers

From the Sherlock Holmes Museum. I have one of these signed cards myself, but it's packed up right now.

I've been kicking around my Street of Bakers project, and as promised, here's a little taste of how it's going. I think that Joey, the character who's speaking in this passage, will probably narrate the whole book; she's stepped into the Watson role quite well. I haven't figured everything out yet, of course. Who is Sofia, really? I know how lost dog comes into it, but I'm still working on how my characters will set fire to Buckingham Palace. And as for Joey's first wedding ... well, that's a story in itself, albeit an incomplete one. 


I know what happens to breakfast, though. That's enough to go on for now. And so, with apologies to A Study in Scarlet ... 

STREET OF BAKERS

CHAPTER 1: MS. SOFIA HUNTER

   What can I tell you about Sofia Hunter? Everyone asks me that. And the answer is: everything—and nothing.

   There’s what everybody knows: the heroine of Buckingham Palace, the mistress of detection, the finest mind of this or any age. There’s what I know: the shrieking violin solos, the daylong sulks, and the chemical experiments that regularly blow out the windows of our flat. When she’s feeling ironic, she calls herself the defender of nations and the finder of lost dogs. But none of that’s the real Sofia Hunter.

   Not that I know the real Sofia. Nobody does, including her. But from the moment we locked eyes in the subway car to the night we set the Palace on fire, I knew there was no one else like her. She saved my life, and I think I saved hers. Sofia Hunter is the most dangerous woman in London, and she’s my best friend.

   But I’m getting ahead of myself. This story begins on the morning of my first wedding, the last time I ever ruined breakfast.