I have never been so happy to see a set of keys taped to a wheelie bin in my entire life. After a flight to Brindisi, a hire car that smelled faintly of melon, and forty-five minutes of increasingly frantic driving through Puglian olive groves, we arrived at our Porto Cesareo villa to find the owner had left our entry details somewhere rather more rustic than expected. There they were, glinting in the late afternoon sun, attached to a note that read "Buongiorno! Fridge is cold!" My partner gave me that look. You know the one. The look that says, "You booked this place," with a silent "and I love you anyway" tacked on the end.

The villa itself sat behind a low wall of that creamy local stone, the kind that seems to glow rather than merely reflect light. A small garden of stubborn, sun-beaten plants surrounded a terrace just wide enough for two loungers and a table that wobbled charmingly on the uneven tiles. I made a mental note to fix the wobble, then promptly forgot for eleven days. The pool was modest, perhaps six strides across, but the water was that particular shade of turquoise that makes you want to lower yourself in by degrees, gasping theatrically at each inch.

By the time we had located the actual front door, the sun had begun its slow descent toward the Ionian Sea, which I could just glimpse between rooftops if I stood on tiptoe near the garden's far corner. We opened the fridge. It was indeed cold, and it contained a bottle of local Primitivo and some slightly elderly tomatoes that we ate standing up, leaning against the counter, too tired to find plates. They tasted of actual summer, which is a flavour the English tomato has never quite mastered.

The next morning I woke before my partner, drawn outside by a warmth that already pressed against the shutters. I made coffee in the small kitchen, spilling grounds on the floor because the filter holder had a crack I would also forget to mention for eleven days, and took my cup to the terrace. A neighbour was already hanging washing on a line strung between two lemon trees. She waved. I waved back with what I hoped was appropriate Italian neighbourliness, not too eager, not too standoffish. She disappeared inside without further ceremony. I decided we were friends.

The days that followed settled into a rhythm so gentle it barely qualified as rhythm at all. Mornings began with that coffee, with reading the same paragraph of my novel three times because a gecko on the wall proved more compelling than plot. By ten the sun had claimed the pool, and we would drift in it like unhurried vegetables, occasionally paddling to the shaded corner where a small overhang of bougainvillea dropped pink petals onto the water's surface. I collected them in my palm and released them again, a pointless ritual that became somehow essential.

Lunch was bread from the bakery on Via Guglielmo Marconi, cheese that sweated in its paper, tomatoes that actually tasted of something. We ate at the wobbly table, never fixing it, perhaps growing fond of its irregularity. Afternoons stretched into reading, dozing, the occasional stroll to the small stretch of beach near Torre Cesarea, where fishermen mended nets in the shade of their boats and pretended not to notice tourists. I bought some of their catch one evening and attempted to grill it. The results were edible, which felt like triumph enough.

I had packed running shoes with ambitious intentions. They remained in my case, gradually buried under damp towels and market purchases, a small monument to the person I occasionally pretend to be. The person I actually am prefers to watch swifts dart above the rooftops at dusk, drinkable wine in hand, wondering nothing more pressing than whether tomorrow's bread might be slightly warmer from the oven.

On our final evening, the neighbour with the lemon trees brought us a bowl of figs from her garden. We communicated in gestures and mispronounced pleasantries. She patted my arm. I nearly wept with unexpected fondness. The figs were overripe, splitting at their seams, impossibly sweet.

We left the keys in the agreed location, though not the wheelie bin. Some dignity, at least. The hire car still smelled of melon. I did not fix the table, or the coffee pot, or run a single kilometre. I had read perhaps forty pages of my novel, swum lazy circles, eaten fish I could not name, and watched the light change across stone and water for eleven days. It was, I think, exactly enough.