I have never been so happy to see a pine tree in my life. After a flight to Cagliari, a hire car that smelled faintly of wet dog, and forty minutes of winding through Sardinian countryside that looked like someone had turned the saturation dial up to eleven, we finally spotted the turning for Costa Rei. My partner was navigating, which is a generous term for what she was actually doing, namely holding her phone at arm's length and saying "I think it's soon" every ninety seconds. The mishap, because there is always a mishap with us, came when I confidently turned down a dirt track that looked convincingly road-like. Three minutes of optimistic crawling later, we found ourselves face to face with a very unbothered goat and what I can only describe as a drainage ditch wearing a grass disguise. Reversing out while the goat judged us silently took ten minutes and most of my dignity.

The proper approach, when we found it, opened onto something else entirely. Our holiday home sat among low scrub and those tall, skinny pines that somehow smell of both resin and holidays, with a terrace that caught the morning sun like it had been waiting specifically for us. I am not normally someone who notices terraces. I am someone who notices whether the kettle works and if the shower goes cold after four minutes. But this one stopped me mid-stride, bags still hanging off both shoulders like a pack mule who had briefly forgotten his purpose. The sea glimmered through a gap in the trees, close enough to promise but far enough to make you earn it with a short stroll.

Inside, the place had that particular stillness of somewhere recently cleaned and patiently waiting. White walls, tiled floors that stayed cool under bare feet, ceiling fans turning lazily. We opened every window, which took approximately forty-five seconds because there were only four and they were all straightforward, unlike the windows at our flat in London which require a degree in engineering and a small prayer. The air smelled of pine and something faintly herbal from the maquis scrub outside, and I stood there like an idiot just breathing it in while my partner unpacked with the focused efficiency of someone who had not just been outsmarted by a goat.

That first afternoon set the template for everything that followed, though we did not know it yet. We walked to the beach in flip-flops that were already sandy, found a spot among the low dunes, and did almost nothing for three hours. I read the same paragraph of my novel approximately seven times because the warmth on my skin kept distracting me, and because a small lizard kept appearing on a nearby rock to perform what I can only describe as sunbathing with more commitment than I have ever brought to anything in my life. My partner swam once, declared the water ridiculous, and spent the rest of the time half-asleep with a hat over her face.

We wandered back as the light went golden, bought bread and tomatoes and cheese from a small shop that also sold inflatable dolphins and fishing line, and ate on that terrace watching the pines go dark against a sky that refused to hurry its own sunset. I kept thinking I should plan something for tomorrow, some proper exploration, some making the most of it. The lizard had the right idea all along. We did very little, deliberately, for a week. It was absolutely perfect.