My grandmother Smiljana, known as Smiljka, died in the suburbs of Split in mid-summer of 2012. She had a big funeral in her hometown of Hvar, where she lived her whole life. At the time, I lived by myself in her house in Hvar, where I had a summer job. Before her death, Granny hadn\’t been in her hometown for several years and she missed it terribly.

My mother\’s sister Anita would come for a swim every few days, and was a pain in the neck, as usual. She would snoop around the house, wishing to know everything that was going on, but at the same time she was very protective of me and at my disposal whatever I needed. Her behaviour remained the same even after the funeral.

Before I arrived from Zagreb to Hvar, an interesting thing happened. My aunt called me every day for a whole week, assuring me that she had checked out the hotel I was going to work at, and trying to convince me that it was run by mobsters and thieves. She even promised she would find me a summer job on the island of Brač, where I grew up. I stubbornly ignored all her suggestions, attributing them to her dottiness. When I started to work in Hvar, it turned out that the hotel was great, with a totally transparent management and the best working conditions I had ever seen. That\’s when it first occurred to me that something was wrong, but as the summer was wearing on, and I started to feel at home both in the house and at my work, I quickly forgot about it.

At the end of the summer, when my job was over, I spent a few days with my parents in Split. As I packed the stuff I wanted to take to Zagreb, I realized I had left a few things I needed in Granny\’s house. I took a ferry to Hvar, but when I came to the house, I realized I couldn\’t unlock the front door. I immediately called Anita who was puzzled at first, but then said she had thought I had lost my key and decided to have the lock changed. The conversation stopped there.

Several days later, my mother was invited to the inheritance proceeding. According to the testament, the two sisters inherited several antique pieces of furniture each. Thefive-meter-long boat was not included in the will and became a shared property of our two families. It is still aground on a beach in Hvar. It was at the proceedings that we learnt the house in Hvar had been in my aunt\’s ownership for seven years, and that she got it through a deed of gift. My mother and sister were devastated. Mum and Aunt were very close. They used to call each other every day and cry on each other\’s shoulder, although they often squabbled, as most sisters do.

My sister, who is rather asocial and „eccentric“, adored our aunt and worshipped the ground she walked on. When I was a child, I thought that aunt Anita was an embodiment of perfection: she was funny and warm, living in a harmonious marriage and having a good sense of humor about life. My parents were the exact opposite: they were always engaged in some kind of conflict and could never stay long in one place.

Every visit to aunt Anita was a trip to Disneyland! As I grew older, I began to realize that all of that was just for a show, but I still remained attached to Anita\’s family andtrusted her. Nothing in her behaviour suggested she had deprived my mother of herinheritance. As always, she never let my mother forget how expensive Granny\’s medications were, she lectured and moralized, and considered it her right to meddleinto other people\’s affairs; but at the same time, she was warm, funny and there for us whatever we needed. Her family was well provided for; she didn\’t need the house in Hvar. What she did was a sheer demonstration of power: she wanted to have thathouse so she could be generous – so we would come as her guests when she invitedus.

My first reaction was anger. All kinds of thoughts raced around my head as I rewound the events of that summer: in hindsight, her statements and reactions had a different meaning. My first urge was to gather several friends and plant myselfin front of her house, to make her too scared to come out. I wanted her to suffer andbe punished for her hypocrisy and manipulations. Thinking about everything thathappened, I realized too many things were running through my mind and decided towrite a script about what troubled me, in order to try and turn something negative and destructive into something positive and constructive.