Submarine - By Joe Dunthorne Page 0,6

one leg, but her foot slips from under her and she falls on her bum into the shallow gloop. Her ruler, rubber, pens and pencils float on the thick algae.

We all feel proud; as Zoe begins to sob, her shirt splattered green, her stationery slowly sinking, we know that this will be one of those vivid memories from youth that Mr Checker told us about in this morning’s assembly.

Autarky

My mother stands by the front gate, talking to a driver’s-side window that is wound down halfway. She is explaining, in Italian, that she cannot speak much Italian. Smiling, she tells the window that she is from ‘Galles’. My mother loves being asked for directions.

‘They must have thought I was local,’ she says, sitting back down at the stone table. Her light tan complements the simple wrinkles at her eyes and mouth. My parents and I are near Barga, in Tuscany, staying in a rented villa. Sitting outside on the clay-coloured patio, we look down upon a small river and a dried-up vineyard in the valley below. It is warm here but not excessively so. My parents like to come to holiday destinations ‘out of season’. It gives them a sense of individuality.

In the car on the way to Heathrow Airport, my parents had a discussion about money. My parents don’t argue – they only discuss. I find this infuriating.

They were discussing how much money to transform into traveller’s cheques. Traveller’s cheques are a way of letting the world know that you expect to get mugged. It is the equivalent of swapping to the other side of the street when you see some older boys smoking outside the newsagent.

They disagreed about how expensive Tuscany would be: Dad thought quite, Mum thought not very. The debate was reignited today, in the butcher’s, when I demanded that we buy lamb. Dad said that the lamb was a bit steep; Mum said that it was perfectly reasonable. Regardless, it is my fifteenth birthday tomorrow so we’re eating things that I like: beetroot and yoghurt, cheesy mash and lamb cutlets of indeterminate value. The lamb is bleeding.

I listen to them talk about their friends and colleagues. I try and let them know that they are boring by turning my head very deliberately from one to the other as they talk, as though we were on Centre Court. They have nicknames for most of their colleagues: Pixie, Queen Ann and Porko. Porko is my mother’s boss.

‘Porko’s getting married.’

‘I thought there already was a Mrs Porko.’

‘No, he’s had various ladies…’

‘Porkettes.’

‘Porkettes. Exactly. But this one is the real deal.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Well, he announced it at the end of an exam-board meeting.’

‘No flash in the pan, then?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Not a rasher decision.’

‘Please, Lloyd.’

Anger does not come easy to me. It is something I have to encourage, like a greyhound in second place. My father is pulling a lump of lamb fat from between his front two teeth. He struggles with it, trying to pincer it between thumb and forefinger, pushing it with his tongue. His yellow teeth are enough – I’m out of the traps with a howl:

‘Why don’t we talk about me?’

My father dabs the edges of his mouth with his handkerchief. Handkerchiefs exist somewhere between the tissue and the flannel. My dad owns eight.

‘All you ever talk about is work. What about me? Aren’t I interesting?’ I say.

‘Okay then, Oliver, tell us something.’

I slide the slices of beetroot around my plate, turning the splodge of yoghurt pink. I like the way beetroot turns your wee pinkish red; I like to pretend that I have internal bleeding.

‘It’s not as easy as that – you can’t just ask me to tell you something and pretend that you’re taking an interest. This is not some board meeting where I’m just another bullet point.’

I sound impassioned. My father pretends to write down something on his handkerchief.

‘My son is not a bullet point,’ he says, making an exaggerated full stop, looking to me for my reaction. He hopes to diffuse the situation with humour. My greyhound is laughing, lagging.

‘To be honest, Oliver, I think of you more as a permaculture farm,’ he says, using a word I don’t understand. He sees my discomfort. ‘Permaculture is a form of very delicate, small-scale self-sufficiency farming. Certain crops are planted next to each other so any nutrients that one plant takes from the soil the other puts back. Like the birds that peck food from a hippo’s teeth, you need a careful balance of stimulus