I have never been so relieved to see a sign for Vodice in my entire life, and that includes the time I got lost in my own hometown Tesco car park. The drive down from Split Airport had been all shimmering Adriatic views and smug self-congratulation at my excellent holiday planning, right up until I missed the turning and spent forty-five minutes circumnavigating a olive grove that Google Maps seemed to believe was a major road. My partner sat in the passenger seat developing what I can only describe as a meaningful silence.

The villa itself, when we finally located it, presented itself through a cloud of dust and my own mounting hysteria. I had been imagining a graceful arrival, perhaps stepping out of the car with a certain continental sophistication. Instead I emerged with my shirt stuck to my back, a half-eaten packet of Croatian crisps down my front, and the realisation that I had been driving with the handbrake partially engaged for the last three kilometres. The gentle scraping noise made sudden, expensive sense.

The key safe code, carefully noted in my phone, refused to work. Three times I entered it. Four. My partner, who had by this point progressed to actively studying a lizard on the wall, offered the observation that I might be using last year's code. Last year's code. I stood there in the Dalmatian afternoon, the scent of pine and sea salt all around me, and contemplated the fundamental organisational failures of my entire adult existence. The correct code, naturally, was in a different note entirely, filed under "Vodice 2024" rather than "Vodice Villa" because apparently I enjoy psychological warfare against my future self.

The door opened onto cool tile and the particular hush of a shuttered room in summer. I will not pretend I did not let out a small noise, something between a sob and a laugh. The kitchen opened directly onto a terrace where bougainvillea had staged what can only be described as an aggressive takeover of the pergola. Beyond it, the pool caught the light in that specific way that makes you forgive yourself for being the sort of person who drives with the handbrake on.

I had planned to unpack methodically, to establish order before exploring. Instead I found myself standing at the edge of that pool still wearing my travelling clothes, my dusty shoes, my dignity in tatters. The water was that perfect temperature where you cannot quite tell where your skin ends and the water begins. I stayed there until my fingers wrinkled and my partner appeared with two glasses of something local and cold, mercifully not mentioning the handbrake again.

By evening we had established ourselves on those terrace chairs, watching the light change over the olive trees I had so recently cursed. The mishaps of arrival had already begun their transformation into anecdote, as mishaps do when the temperature drops to exactly comfortable and someone has handed you grilled fish you did not have to cook yourself. I could hear distant music from Vodice itself, perhaps three kilometres down the hill, and somewhere closer the rhythmic chirping that I chose to believe was crickets rather than anything requiring immediate evacuation.

That first night I slept with the shutters open, waking once to moonlight on the pool and the realisation that I had left my suitcase unopened in the hallway. It remained there until morning. Some arrivals, I decided, deserve their chaos, their wrong turns, their entirely self-inflicted complications. The olive groves and I had made our peace. The handbrake, I suspected, would feature in family lore for years to come.