Jeremy Wordsworth was still asleep. Neither of these names were his fault and he claimed, untruthfully, no kinship whatsoever with his distant ancestor. He slept like a child, the sleep of the just. Beatrix would never understand how he managed to be so good yet so sexy. Could it be because he still believed in God? Perhaps, even after all these years, it was the irresistible allure of forbidden fruit? According to Rome, they weren’t married at all. Cradle Catholic, baptised Beatrix Gabrielle Gillespie, she had no right to marry an Anglican vicar, without dispensation and without a Catholic priest. Vicar's wife and public sinner, Beatrix had been living in sin with Jeremy Wordsworth since Easter Monday, thirteen years ago. Cassie had turned eleven at Easter, Jane was eight. Adam had called Jeremy 'Dad' since he was skinny scrap of eight. Now Jeremy was waking as she kissed him, ready at last to make love, too late, as usual. She'd given up keeping a score, too depressing, especially in term time. Sunday, when luckier couples lay in bed till lunchtime, was the worst day of all. Out of term, Mondays were possible, for he tried to take Mondays off, the other half of his weekend. At least they weren’t rearguard Catholics, making love with graph paper and thermometers.

She flung back the duvet, dressing quickly, in what might as well be school uniform. Teachers had been warned to clean up their act. The skirt was navy, Principles, years old, the top, far more interesting, a Forties original, crepe de chine from a strange little shop in town, opposite the Priory. No tights; cold, at first, but it was the third week of April, time for bare legs. For weeks, she’d been priming her feet, pumicing hard skin, pampering them with Peppermint Foot Lotion, varnishing her toes in a shade called capuccino. Scarlet nails were for women young enough to read their own Cosmopolitan.

Jeremy tried to draw her down on the bed again, but she fought him off, giggling. Then, he would have gone naked to the bathroom, but Cassie was working for a music exam, might get up early to practise. In the bright April sunshine, Adam would sleep till noon, or at least, lie in bed. Adam was supposed to be revising for his finals, though at Oxford, he called them something else. As yet, he’d made no other decisions at all. Beatrix worried about him, because somebody had to. Jeremy wouldn’t. Adam’s so-called ‘real’ father might remember he had a twenty-one year old son, but at the moment, this seemed unlikely. David Rosenbaum was far too busy.

Jeremy said, dourly, ' I'm in the wrong job. Real men lie in bed on Sunday mornings. Real men make love to their wives.'

' Partners. Wives are over forty with no waists.'

She shouldn’t have said that. The F-word was always a mistake. On the other hand, her waist was still a comfort, twenty-three and a half handspan inches, not bad, after three children and her congenital loathing for all gyms. She kissed Jeremy, quickly, passionately, whispered Later and shooed him off to the bathroom. Then she drew back the curtains, just to see the sparkling dew. Oh, to be in England. Occasionally, poets were right, cherishing and celebrating transience, like the days when the eye registers, for the first time, that gauze of green over dead branches. Yesterday, the larches and birch were still dead.

Across the dewy grass, there were small footprints, stencilled in darker green. Jane's, of course. Jane, born at daybreak on Christmas Day, loved the morning. Cassie, like Adam, had arrived in the middle of the night, but she’d steel herself to get up, practise for her Grade III exam. Cassie practised because she wanted to play the pieces in Jane Austen's music book. Cassie had read every Jane Austen novel before she was eight and a half. She’d worn out three copies of Pride and Prejudice already, rejected all TV and film versions. No real man could ever be Mr Darcy, no actress was ever Eliza Bennet. Cassie and Jane were remarkable young women, both of them. Their names were accidental, Cassandra, because Jeremy had always liked it, then Jane, for Beatrix's favourite aunt and godmother. Since she was four years old, Beatrix had longed for some normal and less memorable name. Jane would have been perfect. Unlike her parents, Aunt Jane, though a devout Catholic, had come to their C of E. wedding, all the way from Canberra. Cassie and Jane, like their Austen namesakes, were abnormally devoted to each other. Most sisters fought like cats.

Beatrix took the bacon box from the fridge, extracted two rashers, began to peel off the rind. How Jeremy could eat bacon and eggs at six thirty in the morning was beyond her, but he claimed to need sustenance for the three morning services. Jeremy was lean and spare as a greyhound. In the past year, he’d lost too much weight, and, to his dismay, far too much hair. It wasn’t fair, life was so cruel to men. If a woman went bald, even the NHS rallied round, offering wigs and counselling. Enduring chemo, women could wear scarves and turbans and hats. Cursed from birth, men were offered shampoo thickened with wallpaper paste. If they tried anything that might really work, the price was ridicule or impotence and might knacker their hearts. So cruel, so bloody unfair. Anyway, real men looked so much sexier with a touch of male-pattern baldness. As Bond, Sean Connery had all the plastic allure of Barbie’s Ken. Grey, balding and ex-pat SNP, he was almost a national treasure. Jeremy wasn't actually balding, just receding and suitably grey about the temples. In his best Sunday clericals, he was, unlike his distant ancestor, almost impossibly sexy. Except for the bacon. She couldn't quite forgive the bacon. David had never eaten bacon, at six-thirty or any other time. Long married wives are not supposed to think about old lovers.

Beatrix cracked eggs from the farm into the pan. Shop eggs spread everywhere. Jeremy's eggs had been laid yesterday, fetched from the farm by Cassie. The whites stood proud, the inner circle slightly darker, glassier. The yolks were the colour of marigolds. Cakes baked with eggs from the Blands’ farm always looked as if they were riddled with E numbers. Not that anyone would dare... Kids arrived for tea or a sleepover armed with a list of all their allergies, several inhalers and at least three emergency phone numbers. She fried one slice of bread, his limit and only allowed once a month. Jeremy would prefer two, but she feared for his heart. Allegedly, multivitamins would offset the risks of a fry-up. She'd bought three month's supply in Superdrug and Jeremy would take them or else. Just once, he’d agreed to try green tea, but neither of them could finish the first cup. Pills were easier and cheaper than magic food. Jeremy really did believe in God, but he wasn’t in any hurry to meet his Maker. Often, especially after every God-made disaster, he wondered if there’d be anyone to meet.

He came whistling to the table, bare-legged, still in his towelling robe and smelling of Pears' soap. Beatrix still clung to a few shards of her childhood. Pears' soap was one of them. Unsexy, but safe. Most of her craved adventure and thrills, but the parts of her that were still a little girl only longed to be safe. Jeremy kissed her, on the back of the neck and then, just a little lower, in the Dracula position. This was definitely unsafe. Beatrix, with her unbrushed Pre-Raphaelite mane, longed to haul him upstairs, onto the bed and stuff seven-thirty Communion for a few pious old biddies. Instead, Mrs Wordsworth, the Canon's wife, served bacon, eggs, mushrooms and a thin slice of fried bread on a willow pattern plate. He was allowed ketchup. Ketchup was good for men, precisely why, she couldn’t remember, not at half past six on a Sunday morning. Jeremy was like a little boy with ketchup, almost worse than Adam. He said, plaintively,

' If only they'd deliver the paper... I could drive out, at six, pretend it arrived on the doormat, but it wouldn't be the same.'

Usually, he managed to pick up a Sunday Times after the eleven o'clock service and they’d read it after lunch, or, in good weather, not until evening. He was absolutely right, it wasn't the same. Long ago, with David, they'd read the Sunday papers together, in bed, all day, between episodes of passionate love making. David used to bag the colour supplement first, save the news till evening, when he felt ready to face the real world again. Sunday evening was almost Monday. Really, Monday loomed soon after Sunday lunch, perhaps around half-past three. Every Sunday afternoon, you faced that terrible inevitability.

Jeremy said, a propos of nothing very much,

' The swallows are back. Singing in the eaves. Summer, almost.'

Beatrix made herself a small cup of very strong instant coffee, stirred in two heaped spoons of sugar and scowled at him; no use even pretending it was espresso. It was her own fault, lazy and disorganised. Glossy women showered, then put the freshly ground coffee on, before rousing their seven children. They were always in the office by eight.

She said, peevishly,

' You know what I think about summer. Nothing but trouble, from May Day to the first of September. Exams, fêtes worse than death, visitors and searing heat. I don't go brown, so what's the point? The sun brings me out in lumps. I spend the entire summer plastered with Factor 99 and fake tan. Barbecues mean salmonella and second degree burns. Why should I give a toss about swallows?'

' Because, my love, they're magic birds. All the way from Africa, to raise their families, under our roof. It's a privilege.’

' If you say so. We didn’t have swallows in Manchester. There were a few vile summers, even in those days. Maria made the national news when she was rushed to hospital with sunstroke. Everybody thought it was hilarious, sunstroke in Manchester, comedy story of the week. Goodness knows why... She was only two, she could have died... I've nothing against swallows. I love the way they never quite touch the ground, but even one swallow means summer... Summer days, summer nights, all mozzies and hose-pipe bans. I hate summer. It's alright, though. In November, when everyone else needs Prozac, I'm happy as a lark.'

This was true. Jeremy had noticed, often. In the mists and rains of November, in frost and snow, in howling north easterlies, Beatrix was radiant. It was only summer that made her miserable and no wonder, not a day's respite from the exam countdown to the frantic return to school. He cut into the first fried egg and it was so perfect, he could have kissed her again, sunset yellow spilling out over his crispy bacon. He did kiss her and she protested, because he smelt eggy. They were kissing, passionately, when Jane came in from the garden. She waited until her father had stopped kissing and started eating again, then said, ' The tadpoles in our tank are swimming, but there’s hardly any left in the pond. The ducks eat them all up, greedy things. Can I have bacon rinds for the taddies, because they’re being cannibals? Metamorphosis is weird. They start off vegetarians, eating jelly and weed. Then, they eat anything, especially each other. There are funny things in the tank too, little black things that change shape when they move. Cassie thought they were leeches, but they're too small and the wrong colour.'

' Planarians.', said Beatrix, making herself another shot of rather nasty coffee. ' Flatworms. They live in fresh water. The taddies will probably eat them. Go and get dressed.'

Jane said, plaintively, ' What in? I tore my pink skirt on barbed wire, yesterday. The zip broke on the only jeans left. I can't wear school things on a Sunday. Everything else is in the wash or the ironing cupboard.'

Beatrix said, resigned, ' Fetch your skirt. I'll mend it now. And wear your sailor dress. So can Cassie. After church, jeans.’

Jane sat down, broke off a piece of her father's fried bread and ate it. She was supposed to be a vegetarian and some of the fat might be from bacon, but the problem was, bacon smelt of bacon... It was the smell of frying bacon that had lured her back indoors. Bacon flavoured crisps were her favourite, but Cassie would never forgive her if she broke faith. Pigs had a right to live, like anything else. Cassie, in an unforgiving mood, would refer her father to Genesis, Chapter One, verse twenty six. This, she claimed, gave divine authority for vegetarianism. God said nothing about eating the animals, Adam was only supposed to give them names. If you know somebody’s name, you don’t eat them... Cassie, increasingly radical, refused to drink milk or eat cheese. She used to, until, aged six, she’d connected cows, calves, milk and the anguished cries coming from the Blands’ farm. She’d been a vegetarian since she was two and a half, asking where the lambs were going. Cassie would always stand her ground. Right now, she was wide awake, had been, since half-past six, but she was reading her last year's Christmas present, Jane Austen's letters to her sister Cassandra. Cassie had begged for all Jane Austen's novels, bound in red, last Christmas. In the bath, she read Jane Austen paperbacks. Perceptive as well as precocious, she liked Persuasion best.

Jeremy thought about a second cup of tea, but there was no time and St Anne’s had no loo. On such a perfect April morning, there might be heavy traffic already, heading for the lake and the fells, hordes of determined ramblers from Manchester, hurtling up the M6. Also, he had to put up the hymns and vest himself in white, because it was still Eastertide. Shropshire must be warmer, he thought, absently. Up here, the wild cherry trees were barely in bud and hardly ever wore white for Eastertide. At Cambridge, he’d read Classics and then Theology, on purpose, but fragments of unloved A level English were still in his head. He was hoping against hope that Matthew O' Brian wouldn't be at Holy Communion, with his wife of two weeks. Matthew used to be a glamorous Catholic priest, one of those media stars Rome does so well. And then, being a perfectly ordinary heterosexual man, he’d fallen in love with a pretty and devout Catholic doctor from the Infirmary. He’d met her when on duty as a chaplain. Matthew, ardently in love, hadn’t been released from his vows. He and Bridget had married, illicitly, on Easter Tuesday, in the County Hall register office. According to Rome, this was only a form of marriage, not recognised by the Church. Matthew was convinced that the Catholic Church was wrong about married priests. He pointed out, often, to anyone who couldn’t escape, that St Peter owned a mother in law. Ergo, the first Pope had been married. Only married men are blessed with mothers in law. Jeremy, who knew perfectly well what ergo meant, wished Matthew wouldn't pepper his speeches with Latinisms, like a prep school brat showing off. Long term, if he couldn't win his case in Rome, Matthew was considering crossing to Canterbury, which would allow him to keep Bridget. His current position was hideously inconvenient. According to Rome, Matthew was, rather like Beatrix, living in sin and excommunicate too. Jeremy had offered him communion, but Matthew refused. Bridget accepted, which was even more awkward. Jeremy, wished, helplessly, that the O'Brians would find another refuge The red tops insisted, as usual, that the runaway lovers had escaped to a Lakeland love-nest. The nest was actually a rather scruffy ex-council house in Kirkby.

He left the house whistling something cheerfully Gilbert and Sullivan, proof positive that he was happy. The Church of England allowed him a sexy wife, two lovely daughters, and, for now, the kind of vicarage usually reserved for A-list celebrities.

Jane wanted her breakfast, a jacket potato, with salt and vinegar. Cassie came down, wearing her favourite frayed denim shorts and a T-shirt that might fit a three year old. Vicar's daughter, she couldn't be allowed to appear at the Family Service like this. Beatrix said, sternly, 'Go upstairs, both of you. Sailor dresses. Do as you’re told...'

Cassie scowled. She said, turning a page of her book,

' These are clean. God doesn’t care what people wear. Neither should you. It says so, in the Bible. Babies aren’t born with clothes on. Peter took all his clothes off, when he swam to meet Jesus.'

' Peter’s dad wasn’t a vicar. If you go to church in rags, he’ll be blamed. So will I.’

Cassie didn't argue, because she expected her mother to win. Like it or not, she and Jane were clergy daughters, public property, labelled from birth. Clergy daughters were notorious. Nobody cared if your dad was a farmer, or a teacher, or a plumber. Privately, she blamed the Brontës. After reading Jane Eyre and enough of Wuthering Heights, she’d returned, gratefully, to the sanity of Jane Austen. Jane and Cassandra were clergy daughters too, but they didn’t go on about it and none of their brothers were druggies.

Adam only came to church at Christmas, if he felt like it. Cassie had no immediate plans to negotiate this kind of deal for herself, because secretly, she rather liked going to church. With some important reservations, she believed in God. As for Jesus, who was about the same age as Dr Who?, she had a still-forming idea that he knew about most things in a way the less approachable Almighty and her parents might not. Jesus understood, for instance, that she was worried sick about the exams. She was supposed to be clever, supposed to do well, but there was hateful, odious Molly Harrison, teachers' pet, swot, pain in the neck and everywhere else.

She and Jane went up to their rooms, where they changed into to identical sailor dresses. In the cracked cheval glass that stood on the landing, Cassie could see, objectively, how amazingly good they looked, like girls in a colour supplement. She was dark, like her father, her silky hair almost Japanese, cut in a short bob, with a fringe. Three years older than Jane, she was already less than an inch taller. Everyone said Jane was the image of her mother, unkempt auburn curls tumbling down her back, almost to her waist. Jane's hair had never been cut. The sailor dresses had been bought in the M & S sale last year, for a family wedding. On the whole, the wedding had been worth it, especially the reception in a real castle. Their father had to wear special clothes for church, frocks, really, like Jesus. Last Christmas, Dad had told a journalist how much he hated wearing frocks. It had been in all the papers and on breakfast TV. Walking on the fells, he wore old rugby shorts and gardened in tattered old jeans. Wearing special clothes for church was OK, even clothes your friends wouldn’t be seen dead in. Afterwards, though, it would be the frayed shorts, the ripped jeans. The wretched sailor dresses were just a sort of uniform. School was the same. Uniform was optional, but they’d both opted to wear it. That way, the bullies couldn’t get you. All other clothes were impossible. A boy in Jane's class wore a Che Guavara teeshirt, real, not repro. His mum bid for it on eBay and won.

When they came down, there was no sign of their mother. They could hear tap-tap tapping, from the study, so she must be working on something for school. In the horrible exam term, only Jane was still spared. They’d better get their own breakfasts. Jane went out to the cobbled passage, to fetch a potato from the sack. St Peter's vicarage was ancient. Parts of it were considerably older than the Church of England. The living room, the kitchen and the cobbled passage used to be part of a small abbey, disbanded by Henry VIII, supposedly for wicked and licentious living. The new and married vicar had moved in to the abbot’s lodgings. The last abbot became a martyr, hung, drawn and quartered for his faith. Nearly five hundred years later, he’d just been turned into a Catholic saint. From Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, married vicars had rearranged the place, especially if they had money. In the eighteen sixties, a stout Victorian had added a whole wing, to house his family of ten. In the nineteen sixties, the Church Commissioners pulled the wing down again. In the twenty-first century, the Wordsworths were amazingly lucky to be living in a real vicarage. Every year, the diocese threatened to sell. Every year, so far, St Peter’s had been reprieved by red tape, the Heritage police and crashing house prices. Celebrities and their accountants didn’t really want anything so crumbling and cobbled together.

Returning to the kitchen, Jane pricked her potato, put it in the microwave. Cassie was still wondering what to eat. Then she decided. A banana, an apple and an orange, in that order and definitely not as a smoothie. Smoothies looked like sick without the bits. She ate, thoughtfully, then made tea for herself, rather nice tea, from the box with Chinese writing. Jane wanted milk. Slowly, carefully, Cassie was working on her sister. Drinking milk was cruel, you might as well drink blood. Cows cried for days when their newborn calves were taken away. Jane rarely objected to Cassie’s passionate lectures and they ate together happily enough, listening to the tap, tap, tap of the keyboard. Their mother was so many things, Mum, the Canon's wife, and, at her school, not Mrs, but Dr Wordsworth, teaching history. She worked hard, too hard, sitting up half the night, marking, preparing lessons. Being married to Dad was hard work too... People were always turning up, wanting him and if he was out, they wanted Mum instead. Neither of them planned to be vicars, nor would they marry one.

After breakfast, it wasn't time for church yet and Jane had no homework, nothing she wanted to do. Really, she wanted to go up to their den, but not in white socks, the wretched sailor dress and polished shoes. She mooched about, read some of yesterday's paper, then followed Cassie to the sitting room, listening her sister play the piano. Last year, just for half a term, she’d tried the piano herself. Her puzzled fingers couldn’t make it work at all, nor could she make any sense of dancing tadpoles, page after page of them. Cassie looked at the tadpoles and her fingers made tunes, tunes you could recognise, straight away. Right now, she was just messing about, playing The Entertainer, but her eleven year old hands weren't quite big enough. Abandoning Scott Joplin, Cassie began to play something completely different, Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.

Jane objected. ' It isn't Christmas. You shouldn't.'

Cassie stuck her tongue out. She said, ' I play what I like. Hark, the Herald is Mendelssohn. Wedding March Mendelssohn. Fingal's Cave Mendelssohn. I like carols. Mum’s right. Summer's horrible. Itchy bites and the cousins staying here. Any day now, there'll be a letter with a Polish stamp, fixing it up. Feliks. Manya. I hate them. Little turds.'

' Don’t swear.'

' I didn’t. It's Anglo-Saxon. French people say merde all the time... Swear words are just Anglo-Saxon. Except the F word. It might be Dutch. So there.'

Cassie played a medley of carols, then her set pieces, then Chopsticks, then the Beatles. She was playing Yesterday when Beatrix came to find them for church. Cassie said, seriously,

' You’re very lucky we come to church, every single week. Hardly anyone does and you can’t make us. Most people at school are like Adam. Once a year is quite enough... We're quite incredibly good. Suffer little children. We suffer all right, sitting there, listening to Dad. What will he talk about today?'

Beatrix didn't know. She’d been making notes on the significance of Kristellnacht, the disposal of gold, plundered from the Jews. School history was afflicted by tunnel vision. How much should her A-level set know about other issues, like the Armenian genocide, Palestine, the West Bank and the very bloody end of Yugoslavia? Was any of it relevant to the Third Reich? She’d dressed for church in her Forties frock, navy, with polka dots, cheap at Oxfam because the belt was missing. Subconsciously, she knew how good this reject looked on her, the waist tiny, the sweetheart neckline revealing just enough and no more... They’d be presentable, the Canon’s wife and daughters.

If people laughed, Jeremy knew the Family Service had been a success. They did, so that was all right. To each mystified churchgoer, he’d issued three pipe cleaners. They were asked to make an animal. The congregation had been remarkably inventive, everything from aardvarks to zebras. Imagine God, inventing us lot and all so very different. He invited suggestions from the floor, things God should have put down to a bad hair day, like wasps, nits, mozzies and mole rats. Jane had made a mountain lion. Cassie said her creature was a dolphin. The beauty of each animal lay in the eye of their beholder. To the uninitiated, they looked like three bent pipe cleaners. Nobody knew what this game was supposed to mean, but it was more fun than singing Psalms.

After church, it was time for Sunday lunch, not the tyranny of roast and veg, but anything they liked. And then, a walk, together in the spring countryside. Jeremy needed an antidote, badly. This morning, just as he’d feared, he'd suffered a severe attack of Matthew O'Brian. It was like being abducted into a particularly angst-ridden Graham Greene novel. The man was racked with guilt, tears in his eyes, as he pointedly failed to come up to the rail for Communion. Bridget too, this time. The poor girl was in love and very nearly in hell. Jeremy, happily married, and, thank God, C of E all his life, wondered if they ever made love? Sometimes, this job was almost unbearable. He needed to walk in the hills with Beatrix and the kids, before enduring another service. Often, but privately, he felt sorry for his wife. The Catholic church didn’t allow dissent and membership was for life, whether you liked it or not. According to the C of E, Beatrix had converted. According to Rome, this was impossible. She had lapsed, she was a sinner, but she was not and never could be Anglican. Calling her lapsed made her spit.

Preparing their escape, Beatrix had gone straight to the kitchen, throwing together a picnic, rolls, cheese, peanut butter for Cassie, with kosher margarine. Recently, Cassie had made an shocking discovery. The so-called sunflower margarine they used was ten per cent whey. Currently, she would eat only kosher margarine, approved by the Chief Rabbi. Something about lambs and their mother's milk, in Deuteronomy. According to Jane, kosher marge tasted like Vaseline, but honour was satisfied. David's mother had used the same brand, explained, carefully, to her son's shiksa girlfriend, why it was necessary. David’s mother had been lovely...

Today, for the first time this year, they’d climb over the pass, down into the next valley. Easter had been nastily cold, with thin snow and high winds. Last week, Jeremy couldn’t duck out of a christening party, because the infant was their doctor's firstborn. Today, they could snatch five hours of freedom before Evensong. In his ancient shorts, Jeremy looked nothing like a vicar. Once the collar was off, no-one could possibly tell. His legs were lightly tanned, all year round, golden still, even after the long months of winter. After his eyes, Jeremy’s legs were his very best feature. All men should have grey eyes and preferably, legs sculpted by Pheidian. Jeremy had both, to perfection, not muscle-bound and no hint of blue in the eyes. He’d been a runner, cross country, eight hundred and fifteen hundred metres, schoolboy champion. Then, at Oxford, his blue, followed immediately by a ruptured Achilles tendon and a year of glandular fever, shattering any Olympic dreams. Aged twenty, he discovered various old lies, including If you want something badly enough, you get it and, equally ridiculous, the race is not always to the swift.

On this perfect Sunday in spring, they walked for miles, into the high fells, over the pass, returning by the miners’ track. The children had demolished most of the food in the first hour. As usual, Beatrix had underestimated the combined effects of fresh air, steep hills and healthy young appetites. They had one small bar of chocolate left between five of them. At the last minute, Adam had decided to come too, one more reason why there wasn't enough food. Adam had eaten all her sandwiches and half Jeremy's too. She failed to be angry, because he joined them so rarely now. All Easter, he’d been slogging away at his books, deserved time out, in the April sunshine. Tomorrow, he’d be back in Oxford, for his final term. And then? Parents weren’t allowed to ask.