The SatNav had other ideas about how to reach Saltbaek. Instead of the straightforward coastal route through Zealand, it sent me down a farm track that ended in a field of very judgmental cows. I sat there for a good five minutes, pretending to check my phone with what I hoped looked like purposeful confidence, before accepting defeat and reversing half a mile past the same bovine audience. By the time I finally found the proper turning, I had convinced myself that Danish cows hold grudges.

The cottage revealed itself gradually, tucked behind a windbreak of mature beech trees with the late afternoon sun catching its weathered wooden cladding. I had worried it might feel too polished, too obviously a holiday let, but the garden gate stuck exactly as a garden gate should, and the gravel crunched with satisfying authenticity under my tyres. My first impression was of somewhere that had settled comfortably into its surroundings rather than been dropped upon them.

I dumped my bags in the hallway with the theatrical exhaustion of someone who had endured genuine hardship, then immediately opened every door and window I could find. The place smelled of pine and something else I could not place, something warm and slightly salty that I later realised was simply the breeze coming off the nearby coast. The sitting room had that particular quality of light you only get in Scandinavian properties, where the windows seem to do more work than they reasonably should, pulling in brightness even as the afternoon softened.

I made tea with the efficiency of a person who believes hot beverages solve most problems, then took it outside to the wooden terrace. Here I committed my second error of the day, attempting to sit in a garden chair that folded with sudden violence and deposited me onto the flagstones. No witnesses, thankfully, unless you count a blackbird that paused its evening routine to assess my dignity. I selected a more cooperative chair and stayed there, watching the light move across the lawn, until my tea went cold.

That first evening set the pattern without my consciously deciding anything. I wandered the garden perimeter, identified three types of moss with the authority of someone who had read half a field guide, and noted where the blackcurrants were thinking about ripening. The vegetable patch was clearly someone's pride, neat rows of young plants with the earnest optimism of early summer. I felt immediately protective of it, though I had no right to be, and made a mental note to water anything looking thirsty during my stay.

Dinner was bread and cheese and a tomato so flavoursome it felt almost aggressive about it. I ate on the terrace again, having established which chairs were trustworthy, and watched the sky perform that prolonged Scandinavian fade where you keep thinking darkness has arrived and it keeps not quite happening. Somewhere distant, a dog barked once and thought better of it.

I had brought three books with the optimistic intention of finishing at least two. That first night I read perhaps six pages of the first, my attention drifting repeatedly to the garden, to the particular quality of stillness that is not silence exactly but something more textured. The occasional car passed on the lane beyond the hedge. A wind chime I had not previously noticed made itself known, then subsided.

Before bed I walked the garden once more in what the Danes would probably call twilight and I would call that lovely indefinite time when you can still see but should probably be finding your torch. The cottage windows glowed yellow against the darkening green, and I felt something shift in my chest, some tension I had not registered until it began loosening.

I slept better than I had in months, waking once to absolute darkness and the realisation that I could not remember what day it was, then smiling at this small lostness and falling back into sleep with the trust of someone who had nowhere particular to be.