Dubrovnik #2
Her grandfather had not just been her hero, but everyone else’s too.
When the Homeland War had broken out in 1991, he’d thrown in his job as a merchant seaman and rushed to Dubrovnik’s aid, taking on the dangerous task of running small but vital supply boats up and down the coast to the city.
Ana had been a tiny child at the time, but his exploits were the stuff of family legend.
Once Dubrovnik had been freed, he’d joined the embryonic Croatian navy until the end of the war, when he’d returned home and tried his hand at fishing until the visitors began to return.
He’d instantly seen that tourists meant money, and had somehow managed to buy a small cruise ship then skippered it between the Dalmatian islands, living his life on the water and making a small fortune in the process. A fortune he’d left to his only grandchild.
But Dida had given her so much more than that.
He’d taught her the ways of the ocean, sharing his knowledge and love of the winds and the tides and the freedom they brought.
Her parents, although loving, had seemed just a little bit dull in comparison, with their garden and their chickens, and her father carrying on his father’s business.
When she was with Dida, the wings had been hers.
Dida Krila was the last link between them, and all the more precious to Ana because of it.
She’d never regretted the fact she’d bought her in haste, driven by the emotion of losing him.
No, of course she hadn’t. It was just that over the last few years she had realised she wasn’t suited to chartering.
Certainly not the pandering to tourists, being nice to them even when they weren’t always nice to her.
That was the decision she regretted; not thinking through what it might be like dealing with the public day after day.
She quite literally couldn’t afford to get something so fundamental wrong again.
Her problem now was making the boat pay without those lucrative charters.
Sure, so far this summer she’d sold a few weeks to past guests she’d liked and trusted, but it wasn’t enough to meet the payments on the catamaran and earn a living.
The library project solved all that; her share of the government grant was sufficiently generous to meet her running costs and a modest salary for the summer.
Most importantly, though, it would cover a whole year of loan repayments.
She was damned if she was going to rely on her parents for money. Not again. She was thirty-five, for god’s sake. And the payback they would expect in return could end up being something she couldn’t swallow.
The moment she’d told them she was quitting chartering, they’d suggested putting Dida Krila into the family oyster and tourism company as a luxury day boat.
It was almost as if they’d been waiting for her to trip up so they could pounce and drag her in.
Sranje! Was she being unfair? They were probably just being kind, but the idea still niggled at her.
They wanted her to take over from them one day.
Of course they did. They hadn’t said as much, but she knew.
When Dida had fallen ill, she’d given up her job in Dubrovnik and come home to work for them.
She’d done it to be close to him, but her father had called it her apprenticeship.
The very thought had curled her toes, and inheriting the money had given her an instant escape route.
Except now, if the library didn’t meet the targets the government had set, once this year’s money ran out the family business was the best, if not the only, way of keeping her boat. But Ana still had a feeling that Dida would be deeply disappointed if she gave up her freedom.
Just as her mother and father would be deeply disappointed if she didn’t.
She had to pray it didn’t come to that. It wasn’t as if there was any animosity between them – the exact opposite in fact; they were a close-knit family and their home had always been filled with love.
That’s what made it all the harder to let them down.
She didn’t even know whether, if push came to shove, she could do it, and the weight of their expectations added a whole level of complexity to the summer.
So the library really, really, needed to work.
But honestly, there was no reason for it not to.
It was simple enough. On Monday the school holidays would begin, then every week until the start of September they would sail from island to island, providing a free library service for local children paid for by the government’s language proficiency programme.
Worthwhile for everyone, useful for the kids and lucrative for her.
A life on the water, with wins all round.
She opened the fridge and selected a bottle of her favourite O?ujsko beer, carrying it up the outside steps to the fly deck.
Ducking under the boom, she stretched out on the banquette and looked up into the bluest of skies.
Below her the harbour buzzed with the chink of crockery from restaurants and the murmur of a hundred conversations.
Tonight, she’d kick back and enjoy it all, alone on her beautiful boat. Just the way she liked it.
Tomorrow her crew would arrive and her work would begin.