I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to put diesel in a petrol hire car at Palermo airport. There I stood, nozzle in hand, wondering why it would not fit, while a queue of impatient Sicilians honked behind me. A very kind man in a Fiat Panda rolled down his window and shouted something I am fairly sure translated to "your other left, genius." I waved cheerfully, moved to the correct pump, and resolved never to speak of it again. Until now, obviously.

The drive from Palermo to Partinico took about forty minutes, winding through hills that looked like someone had draped golden-brown velvet across the landscape. Olive groves marched up slopes in orderly rows, and every so often a crumbling stone wall would appear, looking terribly important and Roman. I had the windows down and some dreadful Italian pop radio blaring, feeling enormously pleased with myself despite the fuel debacle. The satnav tried to kill me twice on narrow village streets, but I forgave it. We were bonding.

Arriving at the property, I immediately committed my second error of the day. I had been picturing some compact little holiday flat, perhaps with a token balcony and a view of someone's washing line. What I found instead was a proper stone house with a garden that seemed to stretch toward the horizon, complete with a pool glinting in the afternoon sun like a promise. I stood in the gravel driveway with my single wheeled suitcase, feeling rather like someone who had brought a sandwich to a banquet. The place had weight to it, substance, the sort of quiet confidence that comes from having stood in the same spot for a very long time.

The key was in a lockbox, which I fumbled with for an embarrassing length of time. My phone torch, my reading glasses, and some creative swearing eventually did the trick. The door swung open and that particular coolness hit me, the kind that stone buildings keep for themselves regardless of the heat outside. I stepped into a kitchen that smelled faintly of lemons and old wood, with terracotta tiles underfoot that had been worn smooth by who knows how many feet before mine.

I dumped my bag in the nearest bedroom without really looking, too eager to explore. The sitting room had heavy wooden beams across the ceiling and furniture that looked like it had stories to tell. I ran my hand along a table edge, wondering about the meals it had seen, the arguments, the reconciliations over wine. Travel does this to me, makes me sentimental about furniture. I cannot help it.

Outside, I found the covered terrace and finally stood still. The garden fell away below, all wild rosemary and gnarled fruit trees, with the pool waiting at the bottom like a secret. Beyond the boundary walls, the hills rolled on toward some distant point I could not see. A dog barked somewhere, then stopped. The afternoon heat had that thick, honeyed quality where everything slows down and you slow down with it, or you look like a fool.

I made myself a terrible cup of instant coffee because I could not work the proper machine yet, and sat on the terrace letting it go cold. The mishaps of the day, the wrong fuel pump, the stubborn lockbox, my ridiculous single suitcase, they all seemed part of some necessary ritual now. Arrival is always awkward, I thought, a bit like being a teenager at a party where everyone else knows each other. You stand at the edge until something shifts.

Something shifted. The coffee went cold, a lizard darted across the terrace stones, and I stopped trying to be anywhere else but exactly where I was.