I have never been so grateful to see a set of house keys in my life. Three hours earlier, I had been standing at Ljubljana Airport's car hire desk, patting down every pocket I owned, only to discover I had left my driving licence in the jeans I had worn the night before. The jeans that were currently draped over a chair in my kitchen. In Manchester. This is the sort of thing that happens when you book a holiday in a rush after a stressful month at work. I had to take a taxi all the way to Koper, which cost roughly the same as a small secondhand car, and the driver spent the entire journey telling me about his cousin's olive farm in Istria. I smiled and nodded, mostly because my Slovenian extends to "hello," "beer," and "where is the toilet," and I had used up all my mental energy on the licence debacle.

The taxi finally deposited me at Koper Grintovec in the late afternoon, and I stood there with my rucksack, squinting in the sunshine, feeling slightly ridiculous but also strangely triumphant. The house sat quietly on the edge of things, not showy, not trying too hard, just a solid sort of place with a terrace that immediately caught my eye. I could see a table out there, and a couple of chairs, and beyond them a glimpse of green that promised I was going to be doing absolutely nothing productive for the foreseeable future.

Getting inside was my first priority, and I fumbled with the lockbox like a burglar having an off day. The key turned eventually, and I pushed open the door to that particular smell of a holiday let that has been aired properly and not overdone with air freshener. Wood, maybe, and something faintly herby from the garden outside. I dumped my bag in the hallway and did what every sensible person does: I opened every door to see what I had got myself into.

The kitchen was compact but not cramped, the sort of space where you could make a proper coffee without performing an obstacle course. The living area had a sofa that looked like it had already given good service to previous guests doing very little, which I took as an excellent sign. But it was the terrace that pulled me back outside almost immediately. I dragged one of the chairs to the sunniest corner, sat down with my feet up on the railing, and felt something in my shoulders that had been clenched since approximately March finally start to loosen.

That first evening, I did not explore Koper's old town. I did not seek out a restaurant. I walked to the nearest shop, bought some bread and cheese and a bottle of local wine that cost embarrassingly little, and came back to eat on that terrace as the light went soft and golden. A cat from somewhere nearby wandered past and gave me a look of professional indifference. I read the same paragraph of my novel four times because I kept getting distracted by the warmth on my face and the particular quality of the silence, which was not silence at all really, but the low hum of insects and distant conversation and someone, somewhere, pruning something with more patience than I have ever possessed.

I thought about that driving licence, sitting uselessly in my kitchen five hundred miles away, and instead of the usual spiral of self-criticism, I found myself laughing. Actually laughing, out loud, on my own. The taxi had been absurdly expensive. The whole thing had been entirely my own fault. And yet here I was, cheese dribbling down my chin, watching the sky turn pink over the Slovenian coast, with nowhere to be and nothing to prove. Sometimes you have to get something comically wrong to end up exactly where you need to be.

The next morning I did manage a gentle wander down toward the sea, though "wander" is probably too purposeful a word. I drifted, more like. The path from the house led me through a tangle of greenery that felt almost accidental, as if someone had started a garden decades ago and then thought better of interfering with nature's plans. The Adriatic appeared in glimpses between trees, that particular blue that makes you understand why people paint things. I found a spot on some rocks, took off my shoes, and sat there for an hour with my feet in the water and my book unopened on my lap.

Back at the house, the terrace became my headquarters. I developed a rigorous schedule of morning coffee, mid-morning coffee, lunch, afternoon reading, wine, and watching the light change. Occasionally I would rouse myself to walk to the bakery or the small shop for supplies. I discovered that the local tomatoes taste like tomatoes are supposed to taste, which is something I had apparently forgotten. I learned that Slovenian wine from this corner of the country has a freshness to it that makes you want to keep pouring just one more glass.

There was a moment, somewhere around day four, when I realised I had not checked my work emails once. Not through virtue or discipline, but simply because the thought had not occurred to me. The sun had baked something out of me, some low-level anxiety that I carried around like a pocket I had forgotten to empty. I sat on that terrace with my third coffee of the morning, watching a lizard do push-ups on the warm stone, and understood that this was the entire point. Not the lizard specifically, though he was excellent company, but the doing of very little with complete commitment.

I did explore Koper itself eventually, of course. The old town with its Venetian architecture, the harbour with its working boats and tourist boats side by side, the narrow streets that seem designed for getting pleasantly lost. I ate fish that had been swimming that morning, at a restaurant where the waiter patiently explained the menu in three languages and did not mind when I pointed and smiled instead of attempting any of them. But I always came back to the house, to my terrace, to my routine of gentle inactivity.

The holiday ended as these things do, with a different taxi and a flight and the gradual return of the world and its demands. But I took something with me, something I am still trying to hold onto. That licence is still in my kitchen jeans, by the way. I keep meaning to move it to my wallet, and I keep forgetting, which now feels like a small tribute to that week of glorious, sun-drenched incompetence. Some mistakes, it turns out, lead you exactly where you need to go.