And I was right. Io's pursuit of the Reverend Thorsten was determined, blatant and subtle, if such a thing is possible. It was for her.

She started by smiling at him a lot and disconcerting him. Then she managed to get a conversation going with him about classical music, an interest it turned out that they both shared. After that it was easy. You could see how he looked at her.

He must have wondered what had hit him. For someone like Io to turn up in the parish and make a play for him, it was beyond belief.

For Juliet and I it was great entertainment. We had never witnessed anything like it before. So far we were the only ones aware of what was going on. I think at that stage, even we had told someone what she was up to, they wouldn't have believed us. A married man of the cloth with someone half his age? Hardly likely.

However my mother soon guessed something was up, what with Io dropping by the church all the time, and decided to accompany us to the next Sunday service. This didn't inhibit Io at all. Over the past fortnight she had established a firm public acquaintanceship with him.

But when she called him "vicar" to his face it was with a tiny smile that suggested she used a much more familiar term with him in private.

My mother sat through the service observing and afterwards said nothing. I could tell, however, that she thought that she needed to say something. She was just deciding what and when.

Whatever it was, I hoped it wouldn't cause Io to pack her bags and leave. We adored having her with us.

I was in the dining room trying to concentrate on some holiday homework when I finally overheard my mother bring up the subject with Io in the kitchen. Of course I listened in, because who wouldn't? It was far more interesting than Chaucer.

"Is it your ambition to become the wife of a divorced and likely defrocked vicar, Io?" my mother was saying. Her voice was light but I knew Io could read her true tone, just as I could.

Io was silent for a moment. I imagined that she was stirring her tea. "I can't say it's exactly my life's dream, Aunt Vee." She also spoke with a deliberate lightness.

It was always funny to hear her call my mother Aunt Vee. It was a reminder that her real name was Vere even though she always went by her middle name, Rose, to everyone outside the family. She had switched to Rose on marriage. My father occasionally called her Vere, but usually only "darling" or nothing at all. Most people called her Mrs Lawrence or far worse, "Mrs Doctor". We all winced at that.

One elderly stalwart of the parish had gone out of her way to discover my mother's full name, and then called her "Vera" in conversation. For some reason we all found that particularly ghastly. Even though it was only one syllable away from her actual name, it seemed a world away. Like Juliet and Julie. My mother simply couldn't bear for my sister to be called Julie or Jules. It made me wonder why she had chosen Juliet, but apparently she adored that name. The final syllable made all the difference to her.

On being addressed as Vera, my mother spoke with the intense politeness that increased in intensity the more furious she really was. "I am always called Rose, Mrs Buskin," she had said, and then turned away to emphasise the finality of this statement. Mrs Buskin had pursed her lips, but never again dared to refer to her as Vera.

My mother's tone with Io was similarly polite now. "Then I advise you to stop flirting with Simon Thorsten."

It startled me to hear her call him that. He was always "the vicar" or "Reverend Thorsten" to us. Calling him "Simon Thorsten" brought him down to earth and made him sound like just a regular human being. A man with a life and identity outside his vicarhood.

I heard Io laugh. "His wife is awful."

Here my mother was silent for a while, and when she spoke I could tell she was choosing her words carefully. "Moira Thorsten is a very dutiful woman," was all she was able to say in poor Moira's defence.

"Not the kind of duties that men find most appealing, I should say," Io said. I was quite shocked by her saying this, knowing enough about the birds and the bees and having eavesdropped on enough adult conversation to know exactly what she meant.

Now my mother laughed. Her tone was relaxed again, she was talking to Io as an equal. Perhaps she realised how impossible it was to tell Io anything. At least she had done her auntly duty to express some disapproval. Probably she privately agreed with Io that Moira was pretty awful. She had said in front of us before that Moira could be "rather trying".

"Not all men marry for that," she said to Io.

"No, and probably to their bitter regret," Io replied.

My mother came into the dining room at that point so I buried my head back in the Canterbury Tales and tried not to let her know that I had been listening.

But later when Io visited Juliet and me for one of her "girls' chats" - chats that we gloried in, for they were full of the fascinating and the forbidden - I couldn't resist referring to it.

"You don't think Reverend Thorsten might leave his wife for you, do you?"

Io looked at me for a moment, and her face broke into one of her illuminating smiles. "So you did overhear this morning. I wondered if you had. I shouldn't imagine he will, I certainly don't plan to encourage him to."

"So you'll avoid him, then?" Juliet asked. I had of course told her everything in great detail, and we had feasted over every scandalous morsel, analysing it to the best of our abilities. This included concepts such as a "mid-life crisis" which we had read about in magazines.

"Probably not," Io said. "He's a very interesting and attractive man, and has a wonderful collection of Bach."

"But what if he falls for you?"

Io shrugged. "It might do them both the world of good if he does."

Juliet was bolder than me. "Has he ever tried anything? Made a pass, or kissed you?"

If you've ever wondered what it means when they say that someone "tossed their head back and laughed", that was exactly what Io did then. I tried to imitate it afterwards but just got a crick in my neck and Juliet said I looked like an idiot. Io looked like something out of an old Hollywood film when she did it.

"Goodness, I forget what a pair of babes in the wood you both are. Yes, we've kissed, and he's quite marvellous at it if you wanted to know that as well."

We were both shocked into silence. Our cousin snogging our married vicar was a revelation too far.

Juliet recovered herself first. "How did it happen?"

"How it always happens. A man, a woman, mutual attraction. I must say from the way he first kissed me it was as though he hadn't had contact with female flesh for the past decade."

Thinking of Moira Thorsten, I considered that this may have been due to both choice and necessity.

"I don't know how I'm going to look at him in church again, knowing that," Juliet said. "If he speaks to me it's all I'm going to be thinking of."

"They do say ignorance is bliss," Io observed, "but you did ask."

"She'll end up Boldwooding him," Juliet said.

"What?"

"Far from the Madding Crowd. Aren't you doing that for A-levels?" she asked me.

"No, we got Tess of the D'Urbervilles." There was nearly always a Thomas Hardy text on the syllabus.

Juliet tried again. "But you've read it, right?"

"No." If I didn't have to read a work of literature I didn't bother. I hadn't even read the Brontes or anything since they sounded deadly dull. Juliet, who wanted to be a writer and whose best subject was English, was always exasperated by this.

I did read, just not those books. "So what happens?"

"The main character is this girl who arrives in the country and ends up with three suitors. One of them is an older bachelor whose life is completely overturned when she makes a joke pass at him and he falls madly in love with her."

"So then what happens?"

"He gets obsessed with her and tries to force her to marry him, and when her dead lover turns up alive he has a nervous breakdown and starts shooting people," Juliet told me.

This didn't sound anything like Thomas Hardy from what I had read of him, which so far was only Tess. It sounded more like Jackie Collins. I probably would have read a book with that plot. But I took Juliet's word for it.

"I doubt the Reverend Thorsten owns a gun," I said. "Besides, he's married, not a bachelor."

"It's the same thing though. He's been awakened," Juliet said. She made this last word sound as though it had a capital A.

"Why Boldwooded?" I asked.

"That's his name, Farmer Boldwood."

I pointed out it wasn't a verb.

"It is now," Juliet said. She loved coining new words.

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This story is going to be on Radish only for now, but will hopefully come here later.

In the meantime, check out some of my other stories!