Balls Head Reserve, as always, made me think rude thoughts. Not because of the name – it's a headland, named after a Lieutenant Ball, who captained one of the ships in the First Fleet. And not even rude thoughts about whoever had decided some place names shouldn't get an apostrophe. Rude thoughts based on memories. This had been our place – Skye's and mine – over twenty years earlier. We were young, both still at university. I was living at home with my strict, religious parents; she was sharing a flat with an endless stream of others. So, to get some privacy, we would sneak into dark corners of the bushland which covers the park. Places where we could check off most of the sins that would appal my parents. Places where we thought we wouldn't be seen. Well, at least we told ourselves that that was what we were after.

I paused on my Saturday afternoon stroll, and looked down to the rocky shore of Sydney Harbour, where the lights of the city had spilt out on the first night that we'd come here. I smiled at the memory of her lime green summer dress riding up her thighs as she'd jumped from rock to rock. The colour had been fashionable for a time – at least a few weeks – despite looking terrible on almost everyone. On Skye, though, I'd loved it. Her smile, her personality outshone even the bright dress; her dark hair and pale skin set off against it. Although I probably mostly liked how short it was, and how it clung to her backside, leaving me to wonder if she was wearing anything underneath it.

My recollections were interrupted by an older couple, walking hand in hand down the path in silence, looking in opposite directions. I wondered if that was what might have become of Skye and me if I'd made different decisions – a quiet, relaxed familiarity with each other. Loving, but seemingly lacking the passion that Skye and I had had, taking every opportunity to grope each other whenever we were here.

We'd never fallen into the calm, relaxed companionship that my later marriage had had almost from the start. Perhaps because Skye and I were only together for a couple of years, or maybe we'd had something extraordinary, which I just hadn't appreciated at the time.

"Morning," said the man, with a slight nod.

His wife just glanced at my crotch and then looked up and smiled.

I shuffled a little; embarrassed at the effect that Skye could have on me even ten years after we'd last met.

I mumbled something in reply and carried on my way.

***

When I got home, there was a parcel on my front doorstep. No courier bag or postage, just a handwritten note, and a plastic shopping bag.

The handwriting was vaguely familiar. I unfolded the note and looked straight to the signature. Skye.

I briefly wondered if I should call the bomb squad. She'd been so angry the last time we spoke, but even that had been years earlier. I'd figured at the time that it was maybe for the best. We struggled to be just friends, even with us both married by that stage.

I plunged a hand into the bag and pulled out a brand new hardcover book. The title read, "A Foreign Country". But my eyes were drawn to the bottom of the front cover. There, in bold text, was her name. Skye O'Donnell.

When we were together, she'd dreamt of being a writer. I guess we both had, although my own skills didn't stretch much beyond the occasional dirty story. When I was overseas, I'd check sometimes to see if her name had broken onto the bestsellers list. But, of course, there are a lot of good writers and not many even get published.

Except that now, Skye had.

I'd spent so long with e-readers, I'd almost forgotten the excitement of holding a brand new hardcover in my hands. The smell, the weight, the colours on the dustcover and the sound when I cracked it open. I ran my fingers over the curve of the 'S' on the front cover, remembering running younger fingers across her body.

I went back to the note:

Hi Tom.

I did it! Published author! Well, a few hundred copies, anyway.

I wanted you to have a copy, since you helped inspire some of it. I hope you don't mind; I think it's disguised pretty well. You might not remember the inspiration for page eighty-six anyway. It was a long time ago, even if it doesn't seem like it sometimes.

Love and blessings,

Skye.

I smiled to see the old, familiar, hippy sign-off. I used to tease her about it, but I'd missed it in the years where we hadn't even exchanged emails. In a postscript she'd attached a new email address.

Flicking through the book, it fell open easily to page eighty-six.

I skimmed the page. The two main characters, Bill and Jo were in a seemingly deserted park late at night, partly scared, but mostly turned on by the risk of being seen. I'm sure that every reader would have their own images of the characters, the location, and exactly what they were doing, but I wondered if the images in my mind matched those that had been in the author's when she wrote the piece.

Keen to try to get some more insight into the author's mind, I turned back to the start of the book and began to read. Obviously, it was fiction, but sometimes fiction can reveal the truth more than supposedly honest conversation. The type of conversations we have every day, where everyone is hiding something. Often from themselves.

***

In the book, after a passionate affair with Bill, Jo moved to England to do her doctorate in history, leaving him behind, unwilling to leave his own studies and burgeoning career.

The novel explored the foreignness of other lands to Jo as she moved around the world, but also touched on the foreignness of Australia to some of our ancestors who had tried to impose an English lifestyle onto such a different landscape. And the foreignness to Jo of her own desires as she explored her sexuality with a variety of men. I always liked a book with rich ideas and themes, but a book with ideas, themes and hot sex scenes was better still.

But it also explored one more foreign country, as L. P. Hartley had identified – the past. And whether we can ever really recapture the past. While I don't usually like twee, happily-ever-after endings, I was really hoping that Bill and Jo would get one.

***

In real life, I'd been the one to leave, and Skye had stayed at home, unwilling to move too far from her critically ill mother.

I guess that, like so many other Australians, I'd gone overseas looking for something more exciting than home. London seemed a mythical place, home to a few of my friends who were always off exploring "the continent". What I'd found there was mostly familiar. Just a bunch of people trying to get by and find meaning in their lives. Sometimes it seemed that at least half of them were Australian. The thrill waned quickly – it was a lot like home, except with shitty weather. And no one like Skye. Or at least, if there was, then she didn't want to talk to me, let alone get naked in a park together. Not least because we'd probably freeze to death.

I got used to the money I was earning, though, and, well, I guess I enjoyed the effect a well-placed "g'day" could sometimes have with women around Europe. When I eventually found my way home again, Skye was engaged to be married. Her son was born six months later.

Her mouth had said, "Welcome home," but her eyes had said, "Fuck you for running off in the first place."

***

It was two in the morning when I finished the book. Bill and Jo had been brought back together by tragedy. It wasn't exactly a happily ever after ending, but while they had each other, they had hope. They hadn't recaptured the past, but were trying to build something new together. Other minor characters who had hoped to recapture their past, though, had failed disastrously, perhaps because they were using it as a way to escape the present, or to avoid facing the future.

I still didn't know exactly what the author's opinion on recapturing the past was, but I knew what my opinion was. So I composed an email.

***

Hi Skye,

Wow! I've just read the whole book in one go. Great stuff! I always knew you could write, but just wow.

I can see where you got the inspiration for some bits, but I don't think anyone else would see too much of me in Bill.

Would be great to catch up for a drink sometime... if hubby doesn't mind.

xo,

T.

It was an in-joke between us – always pretending to forget the other's spouse's name. I mostly wanted her to know that I wasn’t trying to go behind his back. Our last fight had been about my constant flirting with her when she had told me so many times that she would never cheat on her husband.

I attached my phone number, hoping that perhaps she would want to catch up again sometime during the week. I stretched and started heading for bed. I was exhausted, but still a little aroused from reading the book, so I returned to a favourite memory – our first visit to Balls Head all those years earlier.

***

That night, we'd found a quiet nook among the rocks by the water. The air was warm and sticky, the heat of the day slowly ebbing away as the slightest of breezes came up the harbour from the ocean. The lights from the city were partly blocked by a rocky outcrop and the main path through the park was several metres steep climb above us. Anyone passing there would need to lean out and look down to notice us.

"This looks like a nice spot," Skye said.

I stepped close to her and held her hands in mine. "For what, exactly?" I was half-joking, but also still unsure as to how far she would want to go. We were fairly well hidden, but we'd never done much more than kiss outdoors.

She laughed. "Well, I forgot my Monopoly set, so..." She leant her head up and we kissed gently for a few moments, before the heat of the kisses built.

We pulled each other close, my growing erection pushing against her. I ran my right hand up the back of her thigh until I reached the bottom of that green dress. I paused as we came up for air, tilted our noses the other way and kissed some more. Then I went searching for the answer to the question that I'd been pondering for most of our walk down here. ‘What did she have on under that dress?’ I ran my hand over her smooth butt cheek up to her hip, excited to discover the answer was: 'Nothing'.

Soon my other hand had joined the right caressing her arse, with the dress pushed up past her hips and held up by my wrists.

There was a noise from somewhere behind her.

"What was that?" she asked quietly. "What if someone's there?" She reached one hand back to pull her dress down, but I was still holding it up.

"Then maybe they'll see that amazing arse of yours, totally bare."

She caught her breath. I looked at her slightly quizzically, and she blushed and looked down.

I moved the palms of my hands around to the sides of her butt, still holding her dress up above her hips, resisting her efforts to cover herself. Although her efforts were half-hearted at best.

I whispered in her ear. "Would you like it if it was a man, looking down at your bare arse and getting hard?"

She gasped slightly.

"Perhaps he would take his cock out and stroke it, thinking about how slutty it is to go out without any knickers on."

Skye moaned as I slowly ran a hand down between her legs.

"Perhaps he'd wonder if he could get a glimpse of your pussy. Fuck, it's dripping wet."

I spun her around to face where the voyeur might be. Or, more likely, where the possum was. Her arse pressed against my cock, which was straining against my shorts, as I started to pull her dress up past her stomach. She made another small effort to stop me.

"I think he'd like to see those perky little tits of yours. And to see how hard your nipples are."

I pulled her dress up and she raised her arms so I could take it off all the way. I threw it several metres away and she stared for a moment, seeming to take in how difficult it would be to cover up if someone really was there.

She moved to cover herself with her hands.

I pulled her arms behind her. "I don't think he'd like that. He might be just about to spurt rope after rope of hot cum all over the ground, imagining that he was covering you with it."

I ran my hand across her pussy and slipped two fingers inside her. She was tight, but so wet that they slid in easily.

She started to moan, but quickly shut her mouth, letting out a slightly strangled sound.

I clasped my other hand across her mouth. "Better not make too much noise or you'll end up with a row of men jerking off watching.  Seeing you naked and so turned on."

That comment was enough to make her grind her pussy against one of my hands, and moan against the other. Her hands were now free, but she made no attempt to cover herself. Instead, she reached back with one hand to stroke my cock through my pants.

Soon after, her whole body shook and she let out a tiny scream, muffled by my hand and by her own attempts to be quiet. I thought her legs might collapse under her for a moment and she'd be held up only by my hand on her pussy.

Slowly she recovered, and I removed my hands from her pussy and mouth. The only sound was of her laboured breathing slowly returning to normal.

There was still a wild look in her eyes when she turned towards me. She grabbed the base of my T-shirt, pulled it up over my head and threw it in the same direction that I'd thrown her dress. Soon, I was naked too; with no chance of covering up if anyone did appear. I just hoped that the police didn't find us.

"Perhaps," Skye whispered, "it might be a woman watching, gazing down your naked body, focussing on your hard cock, imagining it inside her." Her hand ran down my front, teasingly stopping just above my cock. She smiled, perhaps thinking that she was getting her own back on me.

"Or perhaps," I said, "it might be a couple, both turned to watch us as he fucks her from behind."

Her eyes opened wide. "Oh, fuck yes," she whispered.

I spun her around and pushed her shoulders forward. She bent over, finding a rock to lean on, and I pushed into her. It was frantic. Urgent. Animalistic. She put her own hand over her mouth as we both tried to keep quiet. Tried, but probably failed.

I lost track of where we were, my mind focussed on trying to make this pleasure last as long as possible. My thoughts didn't extend beyond our two bodies; in fact, they barely extended beyond where our bodies were joined.

Both lost in the moment, neither of us had any idea about the boat that rounded the headland until it was maybe fifty metres away. Someone on board pointed a bright light in our direction and, for a moment, we froze.

We couldn't see the people on the boat, but could hear several male voices cheering and hollering.

Skye's face was bright red, either with embarrassment or arousal. Or, quite likely, both. She raised her head, looked into the light, and then, much to my surprise, waved cheerily and continued pushing back against me.

I hesitated for a moment, but then resumed my thrusting.

I only managed a few more thrusts before her pussy gripped my cock tightly as she came again. My self-control was gone and I pumped into her again and again.

***

My reminiscing was interrupted just before I lost control at my own hand. My phone had pinged.

Couldn't care what 'hubby' thinks – divorce almost finalized. I read that you'd split from wifey when I was looking for your address (okay, cyber-stalking you). Sorry to hear that. Not fun, is it? Anyway, I don't know about getting a drink there, but Balls Head would be quiet at this time of night. I could be there in fifteen minutes. I still fit into that green dress... not sure if I'll be able to find any knickers to match it though. See you there?

Suddenly wide awake again, I smiled.

After the boat incident, we had both expressed embarrassment and sworn that we wouldn't do anything so risky again. That vow lasted about two days, before we had somehow found our way back to Balls Head.

Twenty-something years later, we were heading there again. I didn't know if we could recapture the past, but we could have a lot of fun trying.