I have never been so grateful for a sat nav's soothing voice telling me to "turn around where possible" as I was somewhere between Ancona and what I hoped was our holiday let in Fano. My other half, Mark, had insisted he "knew a shortcut" which, in husband language, meant we were now navigating a road barely wide enough for a determined Vespa, let alone our battered Ford Focus. The olive branches scraped the wing mirrors. I clutched my phone like a talisman. Mark hummed defensively.

Three wrong turns later, we found it. A handsome stone farmhouse sitting among rolling hills, the kind of place that makes you forget you have spent the last forty minutes bickering about whose fault the detour was. The property was everything the photos promised and then some. Terracotta tiles, wooden shutters, a pool glinting in the afternoon sun like a promise. I was already mentally unpacking my swimming costume when the front door swung open.

"Buongiorno! You are late!"

This was Giuseppe, the owner, who appeared to be roughly seventy and moved with the energy of someone half that age. He wore pressed trousers, leather sandals with socks, and an expression of theatrical disappointment that made me feel like a naughty student arriving after the bell. I started to apologise, to explain about Mark's shortcut, but Giuseppe held up one weathered hand.

"No, no. I make espresso. You drink. Then we talk."

He vanished inside, leaving us on the doorstep with our suitcases and our guilt. Mark shot me a look. I shot him one back. The espresso, when it came, was extraordinary. Thick as tar, sweet as forgiveness. Giuseppe watched us drink with the satisfaction of a man conducting a ritual. Only then did he deem us worthy of the tour.

The house was simple, beautiful, practical. But Giuseppe was the real discovery. Within twenty minutes I knew that his wife had died three years prior, that his daughter in Milan thought he should sell the place, that he had personally laid every tile in the kitchen in 1987 during what he called "my communist phase." He said this without irony, then winked at Mark.

"She left me for a man with better tiles. I keep the tiles. I win."

He introduced us to his neighbour, Donatella, who appeared from nowhere carrying a bowl of ripe tomatoes and a sceptical expression. She was perhaps sixty, dressed entirely in black despite the heat, and regarded us with the suspicion she apparently reserved for all holidaymakers. Giuseppe explained we were English. Donatella's eyebrows performed a small gymnastics routine.

"English," she repeated, as if this explained something. "You eat early. You drink warm beer." She said this not as questions but as settled facts, delivered with the resigned air of someone discussing a mild chronic condition. Then she pressed the tomatoes into my hands and softened fractionally. "But you are thin. You need feeding."

She was back within the hour with homemade pasta, a jar of something pickled that she refused to translate, and instructions for its preparation that involved much gesturing and the repeated phrase "not too much fire." I gathered she had been monitoring previous guests' cooking attempts with the critical attention of a talent show judge.

That evening, Mark and I sat by the pool with wine from the local co-operative, the tomatoes, and Donatella's mysterious jar. We had planned to explore Fano proper, to find a restaurant, to be tourists. Instead we watched the sun drop behind hills that have watched centuries of arrivals and departures, and we listened to Giuseppe and Donatella bicker companionably across the hedge about whose olives were superior this year.

I thought about how we had rushed to get here, how the wrong turns had felt like disaster, how I had wanted to tick boxes and see sights. The mishap of our arrival had become the gift of it. We had arrived flustered and been claimed by people who had nothing to gain from claiming us, who simply seemed to believe that strangers at your door deserve espresso and tomatoes and stories about communist tiling phases.

Mark poured more wine. Somewhere, a dog barked. Donatella shouted something about tomorrow's weather that sounded like a threat. I laughed, properly, for the first time in months.

We would explore Fano eventually, walk its Roman walls, eat fish by the harbour, do all the proper holiday things. But those first hours, those first characters, had already given me what I had not known I was travelling for. Not escape, exactly. Something more like recognition. The sense that being slightly lost, slightly ridiculous, slightly late, might be exactly the right way to arrive somewhere that could feel like belonging, however briefly.

Giuseppe appeared at his window, caught my eye, raised an imaginary espresso cup. I raised my wine glass back. Neither of us needed to say anything. The tomatoes were the best I have ever tasted. The pickled mystery remains unidentified. I suspect Donatella prefers it that way.