WARNING
DO NOT READ THIS STORY IF YOU ARE IN ANY WAY RELIGIOUS OR TAKE OFFENCE AT ADULT STORIES THAT DEPICT RELIGIOUS CHARACTERS.
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Graham kissed me on the cheek as he always did when he went to work and said
"I should be home at my usual time. Have a good day and don't let the builders slack. We need to get the work finished as soon as possible."
"Yes I will, have a good day." I replied, waving as drove away.
We had finally been forced to move into our new home on Friday. The building work was not finished and it was several weeks behind schedule but we had to move due to the new vicar taking over our previous parish. As Graham had been promoted, he didn't want to delay any longer so we agreed to work around the building works. The old house was still usable for the most part but the new extension was only half done due to some unforeseen problems. Subsidence I think one of the builders told Graham when they arrived this morning but it was foreign to me.
As Graham drove away, I looked out beyond our garden to the wide-open vistas. The house was very old and set in the middle of the countryside, surrounded by fields and woodland. In no way typical of a country vicarage, the previous vicar had lived here for fifty years and never done any work to the house. When he died, he left it to the diocese and it became the vicarage. Everything about it was old and decrepit. I was dismayed when I had first seen it but the Bishop had agreed to some major alterations and the work had started almost straight away. Graham had told me that the other four Vicars homes that were now unused would more than pay for the alterations.
Graham was thirty-five and had been a vicar almost from leaving uni. Something he had wanted to do since childhood. He was ten years older than I was when we met but we just seemed to belong together.
I was always a loner. My mother died when I was a just a little girl and my father just lost it so the only person who showed me any attention was the vicar who used to come round to see that daddy and I were ok. I remember he used to play dollies with me and he was such a nice man. It took a long time for daddy to recover but recover he did and seemed to get back to his old self. I was had been very close to my mother as daddy was always working, so I never had a close relationship with him. Therefore, when he came home one day just after my tenth birthday and said that we were moving I wasn't surprised. It just seemed like a little adventure. What I didn't know then was daddy was getting remarried, and I didn't find that out until the day of the wedding. Getting a new dress was wonderful but I had no idea what was going on at the church until the vicar, the same one that used to come round said.
"Hello Dawn. You must be really looking forward to having a new mummy." Then he walked away, patting me on the head as he used to. To say I was confused would be an understatement, even for a child.
Anyway after the wedding we moved into a new house with my new 'mother' who seemed to hate me from the off, and it didn't help that she already had two children of her own. Jason who was eighteen and Penny who was twenty. Neither of them seemed to know I existed until I got under their feet and then it was just, "Move brat." or something like it. Therefore, I just hid myself away from them all as much as possible.
We did start going to church regularly. Not our old church as we had moved too far away. This was where I first met Graham. He took the Sunday school classes and as time went by I would help him with the younger children. We spent a lot of time together and he would always walk me home after. Nothing ever happened of course, not even a kiss or hand holding. He was much too proper for that and so courteous. I felt it was inevitable that we would one day marry.
Shortly after my nineteenth birthday, my father called me into his study. As soon as I saw Graham sitting with him, I suppose I guessed why I was there.
We were married shortly after and not long after that Graham got his own parish. We have been married now for five years. It wasn't exciting but I was happy and I was the dutiful vicar's wife and helped wherever I could with his parish work.
"You ok miss?"
The voice startled me, I don't know how long I had been gazing but it suddenly seemed like ages. "Ohh yes, sorry you startled me Mr Hughes."
"Please call me Pete and I will call you Dawn ok?" He stepped forward and held his huge hand out to me.
Somewhat taken back by his sudden movement I reached out and said, "Er yes, Pete, yes I'm fine thank you."
His hand swallowed mine and he held it a little longer than needed but I just thought he was being friendly. "Cuppa tea would be nice." he said,
"Of course!" I replied, pulling my hand from his as I walked past him into the house.
He followed me to the kitchen and said, "Five of us."
"Yes ok it will be five minutes."
I don't know if he heard me as he had gone from the doorway, only to appear a moment later with the other men. As the sun was quite high now none of them had shirts on and they were all in shorts, some were very short, almost indecent. I couldn't help but notice there muscular bodies, covered in sweat. I felt inexplicably embarrassed
As I made the tea, I heard a shuffling of chair and when I turned around, they had all seated themselves along one wall behind me, leaving one chair by the kitchen table and beside the back door.
They were all chatting quietly until Pete said, "If you don't mind me asking Dawn the guys here were wondering just how old you were. I know it's rude to ask a woman there age but as you're old man is what, forty something? We just wondered."
I giggled, "Forty something, no he's thirty five and I am twenty five."
"There you are, told you he was dirty old git, what a waste of I nice bit of skirt." one of the others said.
"Don't mind him Dawn. Bill. Be quiet. She's the vicar's wife not some bit of skirt."
I was somewhat dumbstruck I think, I had never been called a 'bit of skirt' before and wasn't sure how I felt about it. "That's ok." I said. I poured the tea and took it over to them on a tray.