Mljet
Ana typed a few words into her laptop then stopped.
The noise from the quayside was a distraction, but right at this moment anything would be.
She didn’t know which was worse: the clatter and clang of the small ship unloading next to them or the thud of music from the nearby bar, which was the only building on this part of the waterfront that didn’t look as though it was falling apart.
She swung the seat in front of the chart table around, then stood and stretched.
The small port of Sobra had better views, that was for sure.
The deep, sheltered bay was surrounded by wooded slopes, but at this end of the harbour a road had been gouged out of the hillside, leaving a scar of yellow rock amongst the green.
Beneath it was a rag-tag collection of buildings, some in pristine condition and others with crumbling walls and gaping windows.
It was a far cry from the wild beauty of the nature reserve at the other end of the island where they had been mooring, that was for sure.
But this rather ordinary village was definitely the right place to be.
Local people lived and worked here. It was the island’s only all-year-round ferry port, so they passed through it and came here to shop.
More to the point, these people had children who were using the library.
They would have been all summer if the county education department had bothered to get the location right, which was something she’d be stressing in her report to sodding Ivana.
As long as she could think of a way to do it tactfully.
The wretched woman had pounced almost as soon as she’d come back from her holiday.
Ana had reluctantly gone with Lloyd’s suggestion that he would effectively resign from Kor?ula and Ivana’s response had been predictable, heavily implying that it was an admission of guilt.
Ana had been caught off-guard while she was loading updates to her navigation software, but curbing her instinct to bite back sharply, she’d managed to tell Ivana quite calmly that she believed Lloyd had the library’s best interests at heart.
Now she had to make sure that was evident in her report, and she certainly had plenty to say.
For a start, Lloyd had added another hour to his working day on Lopud, this time before the library opened, for a coffee and English conversation session with not only the older teenagers but a smattering of adults too.
And today, the head of the elementary school on Mljet had asked if he could run some sessions for his pupils once term started – more than a few if he could find the budget.
Of course, Lloyd would be back in England by then, but it didn’t hurt for Ivana to know how impressed the headteacher was with him.
If nothing else, the boost to Lloyd’s confidence had been timely.
Tomorrow could well turn out to be the most important day in the library’s summer.
He was going to need every last iota of everything he could muster.
So would she. She was nervous as hell – mainly for Lloyd, but also for how the day would affect the library’s viability beyond this year, which in turn would affect the conversation she needed to have with her parents on Saturday.
Stretching again, Ana went outside and climbed the steps to the fly deck, where Natali was mending a tear in the mainsail.
“What do you make of Mirjana asking to see Lloyd?”
She looked up from the fiddly task of smoothing flat the patch of adhesive-backed sailcloth.
“I’m more hopeful since Kristina offered to run the library.”
“You think they’re connected? I kind of assumed Ivana had twisted her arm.”
“It’s possible, but the timing made me wonder. Krasna messaged me first thing yesterday, didn’t she? Then within a couple of hours Kristina called you. If Ivana had put pressure on her, I reckon it would have been sooner.”
Ana lowered herself onto the edge of the banquette. “It’s a nice theory and I so want to believe it. This morning Lloyd looked as though he hadn’t slept at all.”
With a final press on the fabric, Natali stepped away and sat down. “So would it help if I told him I think it’s a good thing, or would that just build up his hopes? I mean, what I’m thinking is that something he said to Krasna last week has thrown up doubts in Mirjana’s mind.”
“Why would Mirjana suddenly decide to believe even just one thing Lloyd said when she’s spent all summer calling him a thief and a liar?”
“Krasna believed Lloyd. Maybe Mirjana listened to her because she’s her daughter. I mean, at least she wants to talk to him.”
“I hope you’re right, but I just think we need to be ready to pick up even more pieces.
I offered to go with him, but he refused.
And it feels like … oh, I don’t know … that you and I have our own problems to deal with right now too.
I just hope we can support him enough.” God, she sounded so negative.
She patted Natali’s hand. “Sorry. Look, I’ll leave you to it.
I need to do as much as I can of my report before tomorrow. Just in case.”
“We’re stronger together, Ana.” Natali’s voice drifted after her down the steps. Maybe she was right… No, she should be right, but Ana wasn’t feeling it at the moment.
Back at the chart table, she tried to apply herself to her report once more, but every single word needed dragging from the deepest recesses of her brain.
It wasn’t even the noise from the quay, it was the clatter and clang inside her head as well.
How could she write something positive, when it was the last thing she felt?
The library’s future was on a knife edge. Tomorrow was everything.
But no, no. It wasn’t. Really it wasn’t.
Apart from Kor?ula, every island was doing well.
She needed to buck up her ideas. She needed to channel some of that bliss from Sunday morning and the joy of dancing together from Saturday night; Natali’s positivity from just a few minutes ago.
Were they stronger together? They damn well were.
Furiously deleting most of what she’d written so far, she started again.
This time, she recorded all the good stuff, telling it how it was.
Within fifteen minutes, the only blank paragraph was Kor?ula.
With the report out of the way, it felt as though a weight had been lifted from Ana’s shoulders, but now she was on a roll it was exactly the right time to gather her thoughts to talk to her parents on Saturday.
She just had to work out what she was going to say – what was important, and what was not.
There’d be no backing out, because provided Zac and Tomi were all right, Meri had invited herself to join them again on the sail to Kolo?ep on Sunday.
Obviously she’d expect a blow by blow account of what had happened.
Ana winced. It wouldn’t come to blows, she knew that, but how on earth was she going to refuse her parents everything that had ever been important to them?
It felt almost as though it was a rejection of them as people, but that was as far as it possibly could be from the truth.
She loved them so much, and they loved her.
How could she even be thinking of disappointing them like this?
Yet how could she not? It was her life, and she only had one shot at it.
She couldn’t live for them, however much she loved them.
Maybe that was what she’d say. But even so, to tell them she would not be running the oyster business that had been in the family for so many generations felt too big, too final.
If only she could trust herself to get the decision right.
Dida Krila. That’s what it came down to. Both now and, she realised as she looked around the galley, after Dida had died. Something that had felt so right at the time, could still end up going disastrously wrong.
With the clarity of hindsight, she could see that she’d decided to buy the boat on a whim, in the throes of her grief for her grandfather.
Oh, she’d tried to be sensible as well; her father had helped her with the financial forecasts, she’d done her research, signed up to a charter business that, Covid notwithstanding, had delivered on its promises of income.
But what she’d never even considered was the work itself – dealing with the public, being nice to them all the time, putting up with their unreasonable demands.
And her inability to do so had driven a coach and horses through her business plan, putting everything at risk.
Her inability. Nobody else’s. But on the upside, chartering had been making her unhappy so she’d stopped it.
The idea of being with Pajo had been the same, so she’d put an end to that too.
Clumsily, unfortunately, but she had done it.
Maybe she hadn’t done either particularly well, but she had made decisions that were right for her, and now she realised that was something she should be proud of.
All the same, there was still a significant chance the library pilot project would be judged unsuccessful, then where would she be next year?
Could she still lose her boat? Not as long as she had the safety net of putting Dida Krila into her parents’ business, but she couldn’t keep relying on them for handouts.
Maybe the time had come to properly embrace the freedom she talked so much about needing, to forge a career from it, a life.
She needed to regard the last few years as a massive learning curve.
And if she was that strong, independent woman her father was apparently so proud of, perhaps she could even do it. Without a safety net.
She ran her hand along the smooth edge of the table in front of her.
Inhaled the faint smell of diesel and coffee, mixed with the warm salt breeze; felt the gentle rock of the swell below her.
Looking out of the window, the view, however humble, was new today and would change tomorrow.
As would the colours of the sea, the winds and tides, the shapes of the clouds in the sky.
These, and more, were Dida’s gifts and she could never be without them.
It sounded nebulous, even a little crazy – exactly what Ra? had said about his land and his vines.
But the sea was in her blood, like it had been in Dida’s, and there was nothing she could do about it, even if she wanted to.
She needed, yes needed, to come and go, if not exactly as she pleased, but to be free to sail her own ship through life’s choppy waters.
Ra?. That was another matter she could take into her own hands. Even though when she’d popped in to buy some wine yesterday, he’d told her his daughter was staying for an extra week, she wanted this sorted too. Everything was lining up so she could make a fresh, clean start.
She’d been confused by how short he’d been with her at the winery, almost as though he couldn’t wait to get her off the premises, but as soon as Manda had gone to bed, he’d messaged to apologise, opening up about how tough he was finding it to mix fatherhood with his personal life at the moment.
When you say personal life, you mean me, she’d replied.
A pause. Guilty as charged. Don’t know why. It’s doing my head in a bit.
Do you want to step back a little?
I’d miss our chats if I did. I’m probably overthinking it.
Probably. How are those grapes ripening?
His answer had been another thing that had made her determined to get a date in the diary, because the harvest was likely to start before the end of the month. Defying their recent convention of evening messaging she typed:
How about dinner the Tuesday after Manda goes back? To work out whether or not it’s a date.
Not expecting a reply any time soon, she put her mobile down on the table next to her.
Taking a knife from the drawer, she set about peeling and chopping potatoes for the gregada she was cooking for tonight.
She’d bought some red bream from one of the fishing boats this morning, but the stew would need hours on the hob for the flavours to mingle.
Her phone buzzed and she turned it over, reading the notification on the screen.
“You’ve got yourself a d…” A d? What sort of d? She opened the app to read the last word.
You’ve got yourself a deal ;-)
Shaking her head, Ana started to laugh.