The sat-nav had been insisting for a good twenty minutes that we were "arriving at destination," yet all I could see were endless rows of orange groves and the occasional goat giving us a judgmental stare. My partner Dave was doing that thing where he grips the steering wheel too tightly and refuses to admit we are lost. The kids had begun a competitive whinging match in the back. And then, just as I spotted a sign for Teulada, Dave turned sharply onto what he swore was the right track and promptly scraped the hire car's bumper on a low stone wall belonging to someone who definitely did not want to be our neighbour.

We emerged from the vehicle like a travelling circus of shame, me clutching a carrier bag of melted chocolate buttons, Dave pretending to inspect the damage with great scholarly interest, and the children already spotting the pool glinting behind the villa's white walls. The scrape was superficial. The wall was fine. My dignity, however, required several days of recovery.

The villa itself sat perched on a gentle slope with that lovely honey-coloured stone you see everywhere along this stretch of Costa Blanca. Terracotta pots flanked the entrance, one containing what I initially thought was a decorative arrangement of twigs but turned out to be an extremely patient olive tree. A covered terrace ran along the front, furnished with a sturdy wooden table that immediately announced itself as the headquarters for our entire holiday. I could already picture breakfast there, the children still in pyjamas, Dave nursing his third coffee, all of us moving at approximately half our usual speed.

The inside smelled of clean linen and faintly of the lavender someone had planted beneath the windows. The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, not one of those holiday rentals where you open a cupboard to find a single bent fork and a tin opener from 1973. I caught myself doing that ridiculous thing of opening every drawer within five minutes of arrival, as if conducting an official inventory. Dave unpacked the suitcase onto the bed in the master bedroom, which looked out towards Moraira and the sea beyond, a view so obligingly picturesque it almost seemed rude not to photograph it immediately.

The children had vanished, of course. I found them at the pool, already in their costumes despite our solemn pre-holiday agreement about "settling in first." The water was that particular Mediterranean blue that makes British swimming pools look like they have something to apologise for. I sat on the edge with my feet dangling in, still wearing my travelling clothes, and felt something in my shoulders begin to loosen. The goat judgment had been replaced by the soft clinking of someone pruning vines a few gardens over, and a distant dog barked with the lazy rhythm of a creature that had never known a British winter.

That evening we walked the ten minutes into Moraira's little town centre, which sounds terribly energetic but was really just strolling downhill in search of somewhere that would feed us without requiring reservations or proper shoes. We found a family-run place on a side street, all tiled floors and handwritten menus, where the children ate patatas bravas with the concentration of Olympic athletes and Dave and I shared a pitcher of sangria that seemed to refill itself through some Spanish magic I chose not to question.

Walking back in the dark, the scrape on the bumper already fading into family folklore, I realised how rarely we do this. Not holidays specifically, but this particular rhythm of nothing-much-planned, of measuring days by whether the pool towels have dried, of conversations that wander because nobody needs to be anywhere. The villa had that quality good holiday homes possess, of feeling borrowed rather than rented, as if some kindly previous family had left behind their slower pace for us to try on for size.

I fell asleep to the sound of Dave snoring gently and the distant whisper of the sea, already plotting which terrace chair would become officially mine for the fortnight.