I'd left Manchester at some ungodly hour, bleary-eyed and clutching a coffee that tasted of airport regret. Four hours later I touched down in Malaga, collected a hire car roughly the size of a shopping trolley, and promptly spent forty-five minutes driving in circles around the airport trying to find the A-7. My phone, in what I can only describe as a personal betrayal, kept insisting I was already on the right road when I was quite clearly in a petrol station forecourt near a Lidl.

The drive inland took longer than expected, mostly because I kept pulling over to gawp at the scenery. The Costa del Sol's concrete gradually gave way to hills that looked like they'd been dusted with green velvet, then mountains proper, all jagged and sun-baked. I passed through Ronda with its famous gorge, which I absolutely did not have time to stop for, then promptly stopped for twenty minutes anyway because the view from the roadside made me feel like I'd wandered into a postcard.

Algatocin announced itself with a sign so modest I nearly missed it. The village clings to a hillside in that particular Andalusian fashion, white houses stacked like sugar cubes, narrow streets designed by someone who really didn't anticipate the invention of motor vehicles. My hire car, already sweating in the afternoon heat, whimpered slightly as I navigated a lane that seemed to narrow with every corner. I may have reversed three times to let an elderly gentleman on a scooter pass. He waved cheerfully, entirely unbothered by my incompetence.

The property sat at the edge of the village, and here's where the mishap arrives, right on cue. I'd been given a key code and instructions to find a lockbox. Simple enough. Except I'd written the code on my phone, and my phone, still sulking from its earlier navigational failures, had chosen this exact moment to die. I stood in the driveway, luggage at my feet, frantically pressing the power button and muttering things that would have embarrassed my mother. A cat watched from a wall with the undisguised contempt cats reserve for tourists.

I tried the door on the off chance. Locked, obviously. I tried variations of the code I half-remembered. Nothing. The sun was doing that particularly intense late-afternoon thing, the kind that makes British people realise we have no idea what proper heat actually is. I was considering a tactical retreat to find a cafe and a charger when I noticed a woman tending geraniums in the garden next door. She looked up, caught my desperate expression, and laughed. Not unkindly. The universal laugh of someone who's seen this exact scene before.

Turned out she knew the owner, knew the backup code, and within five minutes I was through the door, phone plugged into the nearest socket, feeling simultaneously grateful and like a complete pillock. She refused my offer of wine with a wave, said something rapid in Spanish that I caught maybe every third word of, and disappeared back to her flowers.

And then, finally, I actually looked around.

The place opened up in that lovely way hillside properties do, living space flowing onto a terrace that seemed to float above the valley. The mountains rolled away in layers, blue-grey fading to hazy distance. A small pool glinted, utterly inviting after my journey and my humiliation. Inside, terracotta floors, wooden beams, that particular coolness that thick old walls provide. Someone had left lemons in a bowl, actual ones from the tree I could see outside, and the smell hit me immediately, clean and sharp and nothing like the artificial nonsense back home.

I made tea, because I'm British and it's a reflex, then immediately laughed at myself and opened the wine I'd brought instead. Sat on that terrace as the light shifted golden, watching swallows dart about, feeling the day's tension drain out through my feet. The village below was quiet, just the occasional voice carrying up, someone's radio playing flamenco faintly, a dog barking somewhere distant.

That first evening, I didn't do much of anything. Wandered the terrace, poked my head into rooms, ran a hand along the rough plaster walls. Found a book left by a previous guest, started it, abandoned it, just sat instead. The sky went through its whole performance, pink to orange to that deep blue that happens properly only when you're away from city lights. Stars appeared, more than I remembered existed.

I'd arrived frazzled, lost, technologically defeated, and slightly sun-addled. Yet within hours, something in my chest had unclenched. The mishap with the key code, which had felt catastrophic in the moment, already seemed like a funny story I'd tell later. The woman with the geraniums had been right to laugh. These things happen. They sort themselves out. The mountains don't care about your phone battery.

I fell asleep that night with the shutters open, some distant owl keeping me company, already wondering how early I could reasonably have that first terrace coffee without seeming tragic. The answer, I decided, would be very early indeed.