We got home and the first thing Bertie did was vanish into the undergrowth like a feral stoat. Gone. Not even a backward glance. Tail in the air, sniffing everything, probably looking for that smug little lizard he never caught last time.
The second thing we noticed? The smell.
Not awful. Just… abandoned. Damp stone, old socks, and Patricia’s bizarre dried orange garlands that always rot slightly in humid air. The sort of scent that says, “Welcome back to rural Galicia, where nothing moulds quite like nostalgia.”
I opened the fridge. Mistake. There was something once white now looking like it had opinions. Patricia found it hilarious. I found it traumatic.
We stood in silence for a second. Then, in unison:
“Kettle.”
The Re-entry Ritual
Our post-roadtrip tradition, perfected over two years: kettle on, Wordle open, phones off airplane mode, dog hopefully still alive. Except this time?
Dead Wi-Fi.
Zero bars.
Even the landline blinked like it had PTSD.
Patricia sighed like someone about to file a complaint with the universe. I bashed the router twice and got electrocuted once. Bertie reappeared at the back door looking ecstatic and absolutely covered in something brown that wasn’t soil. No one asked questions.
And still: no signal.
We ended up doing Wordle with pen and paper. Old school. Tense. She guessed “choir” in four, I wrote “blurt” out of spite. Marital normality restored.
The House Had Opinions Too
We’d forgotten how alive the house is. Not romantically. Literally. It creaks. It shifts. The doors swell and the shutters have developed new personalities. Bedroom one is now Bedroom Damp. Bedroom two—Patricia’s reading room—has been colonised by spiders with ambition. The solar inverter was blinking like a hostage.
She said, “We should probably do a clean tomorrow.”
I said, “We should probably move.”
She didn’t laugh. She just picked up a broom like she was about to re-stage the French Revolution.
The Galician Light
By late afternoon, once the Wi-Fi gods had been appeased (via resetting the router while standing barefoot on the third stair), we finally sat down in the garden. Same view. Same silence. Same ridiculous sense of “Why don’t more people live here?”
Sunlight slid over the hills like it was applying for a job in cinematography. You forget, when you’re away, how hypnotic it is. The slowness. The nothing-happens-ness of it. And how it fills you up anyway.
Bertie barked at a leaf. Or maybe a memory.
We had stale digestives and tea with slightly salty milk (don’t ask). Patricia was already plotting her trip to the Saturday market. I knew it because she said, “I hope Maruxa’s still doing that rosemary cheese,” in the same tone one might say, “I hope the sun still rises in the east.”
And that, right there, is where the next post begins.
Because Maruxa?
Might not be there.
And when Patricia doesn’t get her rosemary cheese, things get… let’s say… investigative.
