Free Fourth Horseman by Kate Thompson Page B

face blank and dreamy. It might have been funny, another time. Now it was just terrifying. I shook him frantically, and dragged him round to face me. ‘Wake up!’
    He looked at me vacantly, as though he had no idea who I was, then turned back to the riders.
    I hauled at his arm and tried a different tactic.
    ‘Leave us alone!’ I yelled at the riders. I found myself pulling my mobile out of my pocket and waving it at them. ‘Get out of here before I call the police!’
    They threw the trees at us. That was what it seemed like, anyway, as a sudden, violent wind sprang out of nowhere and bent them all towards us. It tore leaves off them and hurled them in our faces. We put up our arms to protect our eyes, and the leaves hit our hands with so much force that they stung. Then the wind dropped as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving the woodland quiet and still.
    And empty.
    Dad took a few faltering steps forward, then changed his mind. His knees were trembling and making his trouser legs shake.
    Mine were too.

8
    T HE FIRST TIME, DAD had sent me home, and later he had fobbed me off with goblins and cocoa. This time I wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily. We were travelling home together so he couldn’t get away from me, and there was no way for him to hide how rattled he was. It was a long time before he stopped shaking, and to compensate he cycled at a crawl, leaning forwards and peering at the road as though we were passing through heavy fog.
    ‘What’s happening, Dad?’ I said. ‘Who were they?’
    ‘Mm?’ he said, squinting at the clear road.
    ‘You can’t pretend you didn’t see them. They made you go all funny, Dad.’
    ‘All funny,’ he said absently, as though I was an irritating toddler showing him a new toy. He was cycling erratically. He kept trying to drop behind me, but I wasn’t having any of it. Whenever the road was clear I rode alongside him.
    ‘You have to talk to me,’ I said, with an anger I didn’t even realize I was feeling. ‘This is scaring me half to death!’
    He dragged his eyes from the road for a moment, to look me in the face. In that brief instant I saw that he was afraid too. Terrified. He turned back to the road. ‘This project …’ he said vaguely.
    ‘What about the project?’
    But the moment was gone. His guard came up. I saw it, along with the straightening of his back and the raising of his head.
    ‘It’s going extremely well,’ he said, much, much too cheerfully.
    He began to cycle faster, trying to get ahead of me now, instead of dropping behind me. This time I let him go, not because I was allowing him to close the subject but because an idea was beginning to form in my mind and I wanted to think about it. There had to be an explanation for the appearance of the horsemen, and what if it was an entirely rational one? Maybe the animal rights activists had found out about the lab despite all our precautions. What if they had come up with an extremely novel way of trying to scare us off? I could see that it was a bit far-fetched, but it was the best lead I had come up with so far. I was still mulling it over in my mind when we got back to the house.
    Alex still wasn’t back from the match. Dad bustled around the kitchen being over-cheerful. I left him to it, content now to bide my time and do some more thinking about my new idea. Over dinner Dad made small-talk and I played along. When we were finished he went into the sitting room and I heard the TV go on. I didn’t hurry; I stayed in the kitchen and cleared up, giving him time to get settled and let his guard down. But when I went in to join him he wasn’t there. I went along to the study and opened the door. He was reading a book. He put it down on his lap where I couldn’t see it.
    ‘Just looking something up,’ he said. ‘I’ll be out in five minutes.’
    I went back to the kitchen and made coffee. Properly, with the plunger jug and hot milk. I took it through into the sitting