I have never been so relieved to see a washing machine in my life, and I will tell you why in a moment.

The drive down from Zadar airport had been surprisingly painless, if you do not count my youngest being spectacularly sick on the D8 coastal road precisely three minutes after I bragged about how well the journey was going. "Look at us," I had said, all smug, "no tears, no tantrums, nobody's thrown up yet." The universe does not forgive such hubris. We pulled over near Nin, my husband performing an elaborate roadside cleanup while Croatian motorbikes roared past and I pretended very hard to be checking something vital on my phone.

By the time we reached Zaton, I had that particular glazed expression that comes from three hours of pretending everything is fine. The sat nav announced our arrival down a narrow lane of oleander and stone walls, and there it was: our little holiday house, all terracotta roof and shuttered windows, looking like something from a postcard I would later buy and fail to send.

The key was in the lockbox, which sounds simple enough. It was not. I spent eleven minutes punching in the code, convinced I had been scammed, that we would be sleeping in the hire car, that this was how our holiday would end before it began. My husband stood behind me with that particular patience that is actually not patience at all. "Have you tried the other way round?" he asked. I had not. The box sprang open. I did not thank him.

The first impression of the house was light, so much light, pouring through glass doors onto a terrace that looked down towards the sea. I stepped inside and immediately barked my shin on an ornamental stool that had been invisible to my sun-dazzled eyes. My children found this hilarious. I found it less so, though I laughed because that is what you do, and because the kitchen smelled faintly of lavender and the previous family's cooking, which felt somehow welcoming.

The children disappeared to investigate bedrooms, their voices echoing through the house with that particular frequency that suggests someone is jumping on a bed they should not be. I opened the fridge. Empty, save for a single bottle of water left by the cleaners, which I drank in one go like a woman emerging from a desert. The kitchen had everything we needed for the self-catering chaos to come: mismatched plates, a coffee maker I would never fully master, and that blessed washing machine, tucked in a utility corner like a faithful friend.

I stepped onto the terrace with my second coffee of the afternoon, the first having been abandoned in the car during the sick incident. Below, Zaton spread out in its sleepy September way, a handful of houses, a glimpse of the Adriatic, the distant sound of someone else's holiday. A gecko shot across the wall and I flinched, spilling coffee on my shoe. My husband brought out the suitcases and raised an eyebrow at my expression.

"It's perfect," I said, and meant it, even with the coffee cooling on my foot and the washing machine already humming with the first of many loads and the certain knowledge that I would bark that same shin at least twice more before the week was out.

That evening we walked down to the nearest konoba, the children trailing behind us complaining about the heat in the way children do when they are actually perfectly happy. We ate grilled fish that tasted of charcoal and lemon, and my daughter fell asleep at the table with her head on my arm, and I sat there with my wine going warm, thinking that this was exactly enough, that I did not need anything more complicated than this.

The washing machine hummed through my dreams that night, or perhaps I imagined it, grateful and ridiculous, already half in love with a place that had bruised me and fed me and asked for nothing in return but that I slow down and notice the geckos and the light and the particular quiet of a Dalmatian evening.