Submarine - By Joe Dunthorne Page 0,3

moves round the bed so that he is behind me. ‘Someone who has a thing for pots and pans?’

This is a joke.

He spiders his fingers up and down my back while talking. ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘You know your next-door neighbour, the man at number fifteen?’ I ask.

‘You mean Mr Sheridan?’

‘He is a knacker. A knacker is someone who slaughters horses.’

He doesn’t say anything. He rubs my back at approximately the sixth vertebra.

‘Would you mind lying on your front for me, Oliver? You can put your face here.’ He could have said ‘lying prone’, saving two syllables.

He points to a small hole, a bit like a toilet seat, at one end of the bed.

‘Here, Andrew?’ I ask.

He nods. I shift on to my belly and poke my nose through the hole.

‘I’m going to lower the bed now, Oliver.’ The bed lowers, becoming briefly animate. I wonder if he lied about not understanding the word pansexual.

He massages the area surrounding my eighth vertebra. ‘I know Mr Sheridan quite well, Oliver.’ He has moved up to my neck now. ‘He’s a painter-decorator.’

He rubs my back at approximately the ninth vertebra.

‘Andrew, he has the eyes and overalls of a killer,’ I say.

My mum says that if you want to remember someone’s name you should be sure to address them by their name at least twice during your introductory conversation.

I can only see this tiny patch of light-blue carpet. I think about spitting on it. Or trying to vomit.

He applies a little more pressure on my neck.

‘The family at number thirteen are Zoro…’ I lose my breath as he kneads my back. ‘Zoroastrians. Zoroastrianism is a pre-Islamic religion of ancient Persia.’

I can’t stop myself from grunting. I hope he doesn’t think I’m enjoying myself.

‘Hmm, I’m fairly sure that they are Muslim, Oliver.’ He presses harder on my neck. If I wanted to throw up, I could.

‘Okay,’ he says. A machine bleeps like a television being turned off. ‘I’m going to do some ultrasound on your back.’ I don’t know what the word ultrasound means. Normally, I would note the word on my hand but, in this instance, I am forced to bite a chunk from the inside of my cheek as a reminder.

‘This is cold,’ he says, and it feels like he is breaking eggs on my back. It is not unpleasant.

I think about what he has told me about the family at number thirteen and the man at number fifteen. I think about the way he touches my back and the model skeleton and that he said I have long femurs.

I could easily throw up.

He rubs the gel into my spine and shoulders with what feels like an underarm deodorant roll-on. I don’t need to use deodorant yet. Chips says that roll-on is for gays.

‘I was sick on your car,’ I tell him. He stops rubbing.

‘What?’

It is quite difficult to speak; my cheeks are squished together.

‘On the bonnet. But it didn’t stick because of the rain.’

‘You were sick on my car?’ he says. This is like speaking to a baby.

‘Yes, I was sick on your car. The yellow one. Your car alarm had been going off all night and I wanted to teach you a lesson.’

I really feel like I might be sick. My face is starting to feel numb. There is another bleeping sound. I think he has turned something off. I hear him pacing. I am very vulnerable. I occasionally glimpse one of his loafers. Then he stops. I wait for him to say or do something.

‘You can sit up now, Oliver. We’re done.’

Afterwards, the doctor was very nice to me. He told me that I am really very healthy and my back isn’t bad at all. He gave me a free lumbar support, a salami-shaped cushion, because, he said, he wants us to be friends from now on.

I hide the lumbar support under my shirt as I open my front door.

Mum is waiting inside, sat on the bottom-but-one stair.

‘How did it go?’

‘Great – I feel really relaxed.’

She has half-dried her hair. The tips look darker brown than the roots.

‘Good. Will you go again?’

‘Nah, it turns out I only had a small bit of childhood trauma; it didn’t take very long to sort out. He says that one of my main problems was that I don’t feel close enough to my parents. They don’t share enough with me.’

She watches me. She’s wearing a terrible purple fleece.

‘What’s under your jumper?’ she asks.

I look down at my barrelled chest.

‘That’s a new pillow.’

‘What?’

‘So I