Fourth Horseman by Kate Thompson Page A

that, which didn’t take as long as you’d expect, I would start closing my hand over them. To begin with I didn’t grip them at all, just let them slide away through the tunnel of my fingers. Slowly but surely I would tighten my hold, letting them get accustomed to the pressure but still leaving them in control. And that was it, really. By the time they were actually picked up for the first time they had come to see my hand as part of their furniture and they were hardly bothered at all. They always wriggled a bit, but they never tried to bite me no matter how firmly I needed to hold on.
    The whole process took roughly ten days from beginning to end, depending on the animals themselves and their particular degree of courage. Some adapted much more quickly than that and some more slowly. There were times when it got boring and I half wished I hadn’t volunteered to do it, but at the beginning of my second week I was very glad that I had. Dad, after many failed attempts, finally got through to Mr Davenport and told him that he couldn’t manage without an assistant. He told me that it had been a ‘slightly delicate’ situation and that Davenport had put up strong objections, but when Dad told him that I was already going in there on a regular basis he acquiesced and agreed that if I kept a time sheet he would pay me eight pounds for every hour I worked as Dad’s assistant. I couldn’t believe it. I calculated that I had already earned over a hundred pounds the previous week, which was more money than I’d ever had in my hand at any one time. Things I hadn’t even bothered to dream about suddenly became possibilities.
    ‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Dad. ‘You have to put at least half of it into your savings.’
    He wanted Mr Davenport to let me have my own card, and fingerprint access. It was vital, he insisted, because I would often be arriving when he was in the inner lab, and it would be far too complicated if he had to come out through the decontamination chamber every time I needed to come in. Davenport resisted. Dad insisted. Eventually Dad won, and was given the codes to enter my fingerprint details on the entry mechanism.
    The one thing that Dad hadn’t taken into account when I volunteered to help him was what Alex was going to do while we were both at work. Alex said that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself and didn’t mind being left on his own at home, but Dad wouldn’t hear of that. So Alex suggested that he could go round to Javed’s house every day. Dad said the odd day would be OK, but not every day. Dad wanted him to come along with me to the lab and entertain himself in the woods, but Alex said they didn’t make boys the way they used to, unfortunately, and he had no intention of taking up bird-watching or building tree houses. He would only come with us if Javed could come too. They could hang out together; maybe clear out one of the old sheds and put down some practice mats for their aikido. Dad had to consider it. He said Mr Davenport wouldn’t like it, but Alex said that since Mr Davenport never showed his face around the place there was no reason he should ever find out.
    ‘Javed won’t tell,’ said Alex. ‘If you get him to swear on it he won’t breathe a word. You could trust him with your life.’
    ‘I’m sure I could, but I’ve no intention of it,’ said Dad. But he did, after thinking long and hard, decide to trust him with the secret of the lab and of what he was doing there. It surprised me in one way, but in another it didn’t. There was something about Javed that inspired trust.
    I don’t know why Dad made that decision. Perhaps it was just laziness; the easiest way to get round the problem of what to do with Alex. But sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t more significant than that; a sort of unconscious foresight. As though he knew what was coming and needed to have the possibility of a way out. Giving me access to the lab was one of the vital