I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I forgot the suitcase on the drive. Not lost it, mind you. Actually left it sitting on the gravel next to the car, like some sort of bizarre garden ornament, and drove forty minutes towards Blavand before my daughter asked why Mummy was wearing the same outfit for day three. We turned round, laughing and bickering in equal measure, the boot flapping open where the case should have been. My husband kept saying it was a new minimalist trend. I told him he could trend his way into cooking dinner that night.

The drive through West Jutland had that particular flat, wide feeling you do not quite get in Britain. Endless sky, fields of yellow and green, the occasional farmhouse sitting low and sensible against the wind. We stopped at a supermarket in Esbjerg for supplies and I immediately bought too much cheese. The Danish brown bread, the remoulade, something called spegepolse that my son insisted looked like a snake. Holiday rules apply. You buy the strange sausage.

Arriving at the cottage, the first thing that struck me was the quiet. Not silence exactly. There was wind, always wind, moving through the grasses and rattling the fence in a rhythmic, almost companionable way. The house sat among similar wooden cottages, all angled towards the dunes in that purposeful Scandinavian way. Ours had a small terrace where someone, probably the previous family, had left a half-built sandcastle on the table. We adopted it immediately, named it Frederik, and added a flag made from a cocktail stick and a receipt.

Inside smelled of pine and something faintly beachy. The sort of smell you cannot manufacture, that comes only from years of wet boots and open windows. My daughter ran upstairs to claim the loft bedroom, shrieking when she discovered the sloped ceiling was not kind to tall people. My husband bonked his head within four minutes. We decided the loft was cursed and excellent entertainment.

I pottered in the kitchen while the others unpacked, or pretended to. The kitchen had that practical Danish simplicity. Nothing fancy, everything useful. I made tea with a kettle that boiled with alarming efficiency and stood at the window watching the light change over the landscape. That particular quality of northern light, pale and lingering, making everything look slightly washed and peaceful.

The children discovered the garden gate led directly to a path through low scrub towards the dunes. They were gone before I could issue the usual warnings about sand in shoes, returning twenty minutes later with pockets full of shells and a story about a dead crab they had named and buried. The crab, apparently, was also called Frederik. We were developing a theme.

Evening brought the first proper mishap of cottage life. I had planned a simple pasta, something to ease us in. The hob worked on induction, which I have never mastered, and I spent ten minutes waving the pan around like a conductor waiting for the orchestra to respond. My husband read the manual with that particular male intensity that suggests the manual is personally offending him. The children ate bread and cheese while we battled technology. The pasta eventually happened, slightly crunchy, eaten at the wooden table with the door open to that persistent, friendly wind.

Sitting there, watching my family in the unfamiliar light of a single bulb and the long northern evening outside, I felt that particular shift that holidays bring. The loosening of something tight. The realisation that the forgotten suitcase had not mattered, that the crunchy pasta was fine, that we had somehow already settled into a rhythm of small chaos and simple pleasure.

The wind rattled the fence again. Frederik the sandcastle stood guard on the terrace. Somewhere, I suspected, another dead crab awaited discovery. I poured more wine and let the evening unfold exactly as it wished.