I have never been very good at reading maps. This becomes important later.

The drive from Stavanger Airport took about two hours, winding through Rogaland's patchwork of green fields and sudden fjord views. My partner was navigating, or so I thought. Somewhere near Hjelmeland we realised I had been holding the map upside down for the last forty minutes. We had added a scenic loop past a closed petrol station and someone's very private driveway. "At least we saw that excellent shed," I said, which did not help.

By the time we found the turning for Fister, I was ready to abandon technology forever. The road narrowed to a single track, then to something that was definitely a track but possibly also a determined stream. Trees closed in. A sheep looked at us with undisguised pity. Then suddenly the water opened up, grey-blue and glittering, and there was the house sitting just above the shoreline with its red paint and white trim, looking like it had been waiting patiently for someone to stop being incompetent and simply arrive.

The key was in the lockbox, which I opened on the third attempt while my partner silently filmed my struggle for posterity. The door swung in and the smell hit immediately: wood, salt air, and that particular clean scent of a place that has been empty and then suddenly isn't. The floors were pale wood, the windows enormous, and through them the fjord stretched out like someone had hung a painting just for our benefit. I stood there with my ridiculous wheelie case and felt something in my chest unknot.

I had packed three books, which now seems like the best decision I made all year. The first afternoon we did almost nothing beyond making tea and moving between the sofa and the deck, watching the light change on the water. A boat went past, slow and purposeful. Someone was probably fishing. I thought about waving but couldn't be bothered to lift my arm that high. This became a theme.

The house had a little path down to the water's edge, rocky and slightly treacherous, which I navigated once in my socks and never repeated. There was a spot with an old wooden bench where you could sit with your knees up and watch the tide do its endless, patient work. I spent whole mornings there with my second book, occasionally looking up to confirm that yes, the mountains were still enormous, yes, the water was still there, yes, nothing was required of me whatsoever.

We walked to the small harbour one afternoon, maybe twenty minutes along the road, and found a cluster of boats and a silence so complete it felt almost deliberate. A man was mending something on his vessel and nodded without speaking. We nodded back. This was the extent of our social interaction for three days, and it was perfect.

The sunshine was the unexpected gift. Rogaland's weather has a reputation, and I had packed for endurance. Instead we had clear skies and that particular Nordic brightness that makes colours seem more honest, more themselves. The grass was very green. The red house was very red. My pale legs, when I finally exposed them, were very pale. I burned slightly on the second day and considered it a badge of honour, or at least a lesson I would definitely forget.

Evenings were for the third book and whatever we had cobbled together from the supermarket in Hjelmeland. We ate late, watching the light fail slowly, reluctantly, as if the day itself was not quite ready to be done. The house had no television, which I had worried about and then completely forgot. Who needs stories when you have windows?

On our last morning I sat on that bench again with cold coffee and the finished book heavy in my lap. A heron stood in the shallows, utterly still, doing its own version of nothing. I thought about the map, the wrong turns, the excellent shed. Sometimes getting lost is just the world insisting you take the longer way round to exactly where you needed to be.