The ferry from the mainland to Oland felt like it took longer than my entire drive from Stockholm, mostly because I'd convinced myself I'd left the oven on and spent twenty minutes rummaging for my phone to text the neighbour. I hadn't, obviously. The oven was fine. My dignity, less so, when I realised I'd been sitting in the ferry's disabled bay for the full crossing, too polite to move once I'd settled.

By the time I reached Boeda, I'd been travelling six hours and had eaten nothing but a petrol station hot dog that I'm fairly certain was older than some of the runestones I'd passed. The cottage sat down a gravel track, surrounded by proper Swedish woodland, the kind that makes you feel like you're in a crime drama where the detective has a complicated personal life. Red wooden walls, white trim, the whole picturesque shebang. I was expecting it to look smaller than the photos. They always do. But this one was somehow bigger, which immediately made me suspicious, like when a budget airline seat actually reclines.

The key was in a little combination box by the door, and I managed the code on my third attempt after discovering I'd been reading the final digit upside down. In my defence, it was a six that really wanted to be a nine. The door opened with that satisfying Scandinavian heaviness, all proper insulation and sensible engineering, and I stepped into warmth that smelled faintly of pine and someone's else's very clean holiday.

Here's where I need to be honest with myself. I'd spent the entire journey constructing a narrative of peaceful arrival, of being someone who slides effortlessly into rural Swedish life, perhaps foraging something before supper. The reality was that I stood in the hallway for a full minute, still wearing my coat, just staring at how tidy everything was. The kitchen looked like a showroom where actual cooking would be a betrayal. I opened a cupboard expecting chaos and found stacked bowls in descending size order. Who does this? Swedes, apparently. People who understand that life is too short for mismatched Tupperware.

I made the mistake of testing the sofa before unpacking, which is holiday code for "I will not move for forty minutes." It was one of those dangerously comfortable Scandinavian numbers, firm enough to suggest virtue but yielding enough to trap you. Through the window, I could see proper darkness gathering, the kind we barely get in southern England anymore, and somewhere in the trees, an owl started up with that rhythmic hooting that sounds sarcastic if you listen too long.

The mishap, because there always is one: I'd brought a bottle of red to celebrate arrival, grandly imagining myself on the little wooden terrace with a glass and the forest air. No corkscrew in the kitchen. None in my bag. I spent ten minutes trying to push the cork in with a wooden spoon handle before admitting defeat and drinking lukewarm coffee instead, standing at the kitchen window like a Victorian ghost, watching a deer pick its way across the garden with the unhurried confidence of something that knows exactly where the corkscrews are hidden.

By morning I'd found one, obviously, in a drawer I'd convinced myself I'd checked. The deer had moved on to whatever deer do. I sat on that terrace with my coffee, properly this time, and watched the light come up through the pine trees, feeling that particular smugness of someone who has arrived somewhere quiet and has absolutely nothing planned except perhaps a walk to the beach later, perhaps not. The mishaps felt properly distant now, silly little things that belong to the journey, not the staying. That's the trick of it, I think. You don't arrive perfect. You arrive human, slightly ridiculous, and then the place settles around you until you can't quite remember why you ever rushed about in the first place.