First Fruits Read Online Free Page A

Greek.
Greek will make us even more special than before. We'll be able to read the New
Testament together as it was first written. It will put us in a class of our
own.
    Except, now there's Lydia too. Which
makes you wonder. Maybe I'm not the only the one. Maybe there's someone else
with a dad like mine.
    Silly me. That's impossible. I know very
well, better than anyone. There's no-one like my dad, not in the whole wide
world. And I'm his daughter, the luckiest girl alive.
     
     

Chapter Two
     
    TIME
TO GO HOME,  AND here's Hilary - who has been ready for the last ten minutes -
insisting on waiting for me. The idea is to walk out of school together, arm in
arm just like the rosy-cheeked schoolgirl pals on the covers of her books. As
if she didn't know that, with my leg the way it is, people would take one look
and think she was needing to help me.
    So Hilary, who keeps on having to wait,
has to walk unaided.
    What she can't understand though, is the
reason for the wait, for why we invariably have to be last out. And that's
where I despair of Hilary. Because she wouldn't get it, not even if I told her.
    He will be waiting for me.
    In other words, it's no good making my
exit along with everybody else, just another person in the crowd. You may as
well be an ant among five hundred other ants, he says. When I walk out of
school, he wants to be able to see me, standing out, unmissable.
    Like him.
    It means I have to keep him waiting too, but he doesn't mind a bit. He parks the car next to where the
sixth formers come out, stalking past on legs way too long for skirts that
haven't fitted them since the fourth year. Well, you can imagine what they look
like. Yet he doesn't complain - or look away - ever. He just stares and stares,
never takes his eyes off them. He says it's a God-given opportunity to spot
souls.
    That's what he's so good at, you see,
identifying souls. My Dad, he can spot them from a hundred yards, the folk who
are destined for Heaven and the folk who aren't - the Sheep and the Goats. 
Though of course you can't tell them that, not nowadays, not even at his
Service. Nobody wants to hear how, in God's eyes, they are no more than
livestock. But that's what it's all about; and my dad can sit there in the car
and spot them, the ones who are chosen and the ones who are not.
    Appearances have nothing to do with it,
not even amongst the tiny ones, still clutching the hands of their older
sisters, straight out of nursery, all big cheeks and curls. They look like
angels already, don't they? But it makes no difference. It's all been decided.
If they're not chosen they'll go the same way as the others, finished before
they've even started.
    And of course they don't suspect. Bad
teaching in the churches, he says, the reason that those girls in the sixth -
the ones who pass by him the closest, the very people who would have the most
to learn - can carry on walking, pretending he's not there. But he knows. Everything's temporary. In the next world it could all be different.
    I only wish he would tell me who they
are, the ones who haven't been chosen. I always have. Once when I was little I
had the idea that I could go round warning them, not understanding it was the
worst sin of all: wanting to interfere with God's will.
    I shouldn't have told him what I had in
mind.  I was old enough to know better. It was my fault, then, forcing him to
take steps, making sure it never happened again. Some people have to be saved
from themselves, including even a child of his. Especially a child of his.
    Yet even now, I'd still love to know.
Especially about Fiona McPherson, and where she's headed. There'd be no danger
of me trying to interfere with God's will.
    In the meantime, today, as every day,
Hilary thinks she is the first to see the car. 'Oh, there's your dad,' she
says, trying to sound casual. As if I hadn't managed to spot my own father. He
sees us coming and winds down the window. It makes an awful scraping noise, the
car is that