"We went to Wolverbeck Hall & Gardens last week," Mum announced as we sat at the kitchen table. "Have you ever been there?"
I turned briefly to look at Holly, sitting next to me, before I answered, and her face gave nothing away. "Yes," I replied, turning back to Mum. "I once had a work away day there. Nice house, lovely gardens."
But I wasn't thinking about my own experience.
"You've been in Wolverbeck Gardens too, haven't you Holly?" I added, waiting to hear what she'd say, knowing that a particular verb could be inserted between the 'been' and the 'in'.
"I had a lot of outdoor sex in my early twenties," Holly once told me, as we lay together talking, after (non-outdoor) sex.
"Any particular favourites?" I had asked, trying not to sound too eager to hear about her sex life before me. We'd tried a bit of al-frisko in the early years. On a coastal headland, Holly had unexpectedly pushed me against the rocks, unzipped my fly and swiftly jerked me off. A few months later, towards the end of a friend's wedding reception, I'd hitched up her dress and fucked her in a secluded hotel doorway. But it soon petered out. Perhaps she'd already had her fill.
"Well, I did it once in the garden of my old house on Summerton Lane," she said. "During a house party. That was fun."
"And then there was that time I sneaked into the gardens at Wolverbeck with a boy from the rugby club."