Fourth Horseman by Kate Thompson

will stay with you for a while, then gradually fade. With the white horseman it was entirely different. The further I got from the place and the event, the more powerful the memory became. It was as though the image had scorched itself into my consciousness the way a bright light bleaches the retina and stays at the front of your vision long after it’s gone. More than that, the horseman grew in my memory. When we saw him in the woods he was life-size. Now, in my mind, he grew bigger, dwarfing the woods, the buildings, the city. I was certain that his appearance had a meaning, and a meaning that was particularly relevant to Dad. It was a warning, though of what I had no idea. I was sure that something dreadful was going to happen.
    But as the days passed nothing dreadful did happen, and although the image of the rider and the way he made me feel were never far from the surface, I began gradually to lose my anxiety about it. I didn’t mention it to Alex because I didn’t want to alarm him, and although I was seeing a lot of Dad in the lab, nothing in his attitude suggested that he had changed his mind about talking. On the surface of things we were getting on well and enjoying working together, but beneath the surface was an uncomfortable tension; a huge, prickly no-go area.
    I had a strong sense that something in Dad had changed. It was hard for me to put my finger on it, and it’s possible that the change was in me and that I was harbouring a grudge because of his refusal to talk about what had happened. But I think it was more than that. Dad behaved pretty much as he always had. He chatted about the same things, made the same kind of jokes, put the same effort into meeting our needs and being a good father. But something was missing. His spirit was damaged, or in retreat somewhere deep within himself. It was almost as though he was acting being our dad.
    I went in to the lab for an hour or two after school every day. Handling the squirrels turned out to be a lot easier than I had expected. I found a good website called www.yourgerbilandyou.org, which told me all I needed to know and a lot more besides. The trick was to let them come to me and not the other way round. I worked on one group of six squirrels at a time. I would open the wire door in the top of the cage, put my hand in and just leave it there. In a surprisingly short space of time, the squirrels would come over to investigate. Provided I kept perfectly still while they sniffed around my hand, they would soon start testing it with their tiny paws, and then start climbing on to it. I learned one important lesson very early on and I was very lucky that I didn’t lose one of the squirrels in the process. In every group there were bold ones and timid ones, and it was the boldest of the bold ones that caught me off guard. The very first time she stepped on to my hand she realized that the arm extending above it was an escape route and ran straight up it. In retrospect it was pretty obvious, but I hadn’t had the sense to think of it and the gerbil website had neglected to mention the danger. Luckily, as soon as she found herself outside the cage she lost her nerve and hesitated, and in that split second I was able to block her ascent with my free hand. Again luckily, she dropped straight back down inside the cage instead of on top of it. If she had escaped into the room we might never have succeeded in catching her. After that I always wrapped a thick scarf around my arm when I put my hand into one of the cages and the fabric effectively blocked the escape hatch when the squirrels, as they invariably did, climbed upwards.
    When they were quite happy standing on my hand and running up and down my arm, the next step was for me to gently start moving. At first the babies would scatter to the corners of the cage, but gradually they got used to it, and then I would bring up my thumb and touch the tops of their heads and their backs. When they were comfortable with