Korčula
“Right, I’m off.” Lloyd hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.
Ana and Natali looked up from the chart table where they were discussing the best route for the long sail back to Kolo?ep tomorrow.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come?” Ana asked.
“We’ve already been through this and, grateful as I am, this is down to me,” he snapped. “Sorry … sorry…”
“I understand,” said Ana, and Natali gave him the biggest possible hug.
Despite his nerves, Lloyd had been surprised that this morning at least a tiny slice of the inner calm he’d achieved since telling Jenny about Mirjana last Saturday had stayed with him.
Admittedly, it was buried pretty deep inside, but it was there all the same, and had been the only thing that had made yesterday in Kor?ula town bearable.
As he walked along the marina, he clung to it for all he was worth.
It was only just after nine and the sole person he passed was a jogger, the tinny sound issuing from her headphones cutting the birdsong with an unnatural rhythm.
Would there even be anyone at the konoba yet?
But unless things had changed so very much, on a busy summer Saturday there’d be plenty of preparation work to do, and anyway, the family had always lived in the apartment above.
What was the shape of that family now? If he was right and the woman he’d seen in the supermarket was Mirjana’s daughter, there would most likely be a husband – one who would no doubt take his wife’s side, and perhaps who was stirring the trouble.
Maybe there were more children, even an aged parent or two.
Mirjana’s father had always been good to him, so perhaps, if he was still around…
Perhaps even Kesten, although Lloyd did rather hope that his old friend hadn’t spent his life waiting tables.
Maybe he’d even stayed in the army that he’d been so keen to join.
Already Lloyd was standing at the bottom of the steps to Konoba Pecaros. If he hesitated too long, wiping the sweat from his palms onto his chinos yet again, he might never climb them, so he propelled himself upwards and into the restaurant.
What hit him first was the old familiar smell: faint whiffs of charred wood from the pizza oven and the hint of stale wine overlaid with fresh coffee.
Rich tomato sauce on the stove. As he looked around, he realised the tables were in much the same places as before, but the ceiling had been boarded out so there was no longer any rustling rattan above his head.
Next to the bar hummed a vast glass-fronted fridge, filled to the brim with bottles and cans of beer and soft drinks.
Someone was whistling in the kitchen so he followed the sound, pushing on the door. The curly-haired man chopping peppers looked up, and said in Croatian, “We’re not open yet. Not for another hour or so.”
The thickness in Lloyd’s throat made replying all but impossible, but he swallowed it down. “I’m looking for Mirjana.”
“Oh, OK.” The man yelled towards the stairs. “Boss, someone to see you!” Before she could ask who it was, Lloyd retreated to the restaurant.
He heard footsteps above. Not light like a girl’s, but solid, businesslike. The girl he’d known so well had become a woman he didn’t know at all. He knew nothing about her, except that she was the type who held grudges. And acted on them.
“Oh, so it’s you.” Mirjana’s hand rested on the door jamb. Her dark eyes were hard as coals, the lines beneath them etched deep, her mouth thinner than he remembered.
“We need to talk.”
“Do we? You may want to, but I have nothing to say.”
Despite her nonchalant tone and raised eyebrow, she was gripping the wood tightly. Perhaps this wasn’t easy for her either. Perhaps she was feeling less confident than she sounded.
“Then could I perhaps ask for a few minutes of your time to listen?”
She gave a brief nod. At least she hadn’t turned and walked away.
“Thank you. I’ll get straight to the point. I need to know what you think I stole. I need to clear this up if I possibly can, because—”
“What I think you stole?” She mimicked his bad Croatian accent cruelly, and a flicker of anger stirred inside him.
“There’s no need for that,” he told her crossly. “Let’s at least be civil with each other.”
“Civil? Civil? After what you did, you lying bastard! All summer you took us in. Playing at being so nice, making me think—”
“Playing?” The heat was rising under the collar of his polo shirt, a trickle of sweat running down his back. He mustn’t lose it, he mustn’t. One more try. If not for himself, for Ana and Natali.
“You played us all. You’re nothing but a conman!” Mirjana yelled. “And me, just an innocent nineteen-year-old, sucked in by your lies. You sure had your fun with me, didn’t you? I bet you were laughing behind our backs the whole time, even when you were screwing me.”
How could she believe that? “Mirjana, no! That wasn’t how it was at all. It was real, all of it, at least for me.”
“Like fuck it was.”
A tidal wave of anger washed over him. “Well it was until you sent Kesten to do your dirty work. And still I loved you. I grieved…” He flung his arms in the air. “Oh, what’s the point?”
Mirjana took three steps towards him. “The point is, you stole my mother’s jewellery. The point is, you dared to come back. The point is, I want you off this island. Permanently.”
“Your mother’s jewellery?”
“Every last piece of it, as well you know.” Mirjana moved even closer, wagging her finger. “It killed her. What you did bloody killed her. And when she died, all I had to remember her by was the sodding earring you dropped on your bedroom floor.” The finger became a fist, raised in his direction.
“Mirjana, no!”
“Mirjana, no.” She mimicked him again. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
His breath was ragged as he inhaled deeply. “Just one more thing, one very important thing. I stole nothing. Nothing at all.”
He turned away so sharply he felt dizzy for a moment and reached for the back of a chair for support.
His fingers groped the air as the sea in front of him blurred.
But no, he would not show weakness. Would not show this stranger anything.
It was all he could do not to stumble down the steps, her eyes surely boring into his back as he slowly walked away.
He stopped when he came to a bench and sat down, taking one deep breath after another.
He could still feel the blood pumping through the veins in his neck, his head thudding in time.
He clenched his fists and unclenched them again and again, then sat back and closed his eyes, listening to the wash of the waves on the rocks below, feeling the sun relax his muscles one by one.
His first thought when he opened his eyes again was the irony of choosing this spot.
He’d chosen it before, long before there was a seat here.
Chosen it as the place to tell Mirjana that he was falling for her and if she didn’t feel the same then he’d be leaving.
Which had led to it being the place they’d first kissed, with the soft navy hues of the night around them, the waves caressing the rocks at their feet.
It hadn’t been his first kiss, not by a long chalk, but it had felt as though it was.
It was the first time he’d put his lips against a girl’s and it had meant something more than curious exploration, or vague attraction, or downright lust. It was as if they had been communicating at a deeper level, opening doors within their hearts and minds, places where only each other could go.
And it had felt that way all summer, as if there’d been a web of magic tying them together and keeping everyone else out.
The slightest glance or touch between them had meant so much.
Oh, it sounded ridiculous now, but at the time it had been gloriously real.
Until it had become devastatingly so. Until he’d misread her so badly.
Until she’d decided not to come to the harbour.
Until she’d shattered his swollen heart into the tiniest of pieces.
Lloyd stretched his legs in front of him and steepled his fingers between his knees.
A bee buzzed through the wild rosemary on the bank, distracting him from his line of thought.
Up until now, he’d struggled to believe that the responsibility had been anything other than his alone, but seeing Mirjana so hard-faced, so intransigent, he began to wonder.
It had taken two to make them; had it taken two to break them as well?
She’d been so young, with no hint of the woman he’d met this morning.
The knocks that had shaped this bitter and angry Mirjana had undoubtedly come afterwards.
Had they even started the day he left? What had driven her decision to send Kesten to the harbour?
Her mother, persuading her to salvage some pride and stay at home, telling her once again that in going alone, he didn’t love her enough?
Or that underneath it all she had truly expected him to take her to England and to safety, and his total misreading of her had been a betrayal of everything they’d had.
Same old, same old, same old. Round and round.
But why lie about him now? Because revenge was best served cold?
Because she simply couldn’t bear the thought of him on the same island as her?
She’d said she wanted him gone, but to brand him a thief was a pretty extreme way to go about it.
But it was also a sure-fire way of losing him his job.
And after all this time, how could he disprove her accusations?
Who would believe a foreigner against a respected local businesswoman?
Which meant the dangerous rumours would not stop. Which meant the library’s reputation would continue to be compromised. That couldn’t be allowed to happen because of a lie, but what the hell could he do about it?