DAY SEVEN – Another Rugby Club Disco
Saturday 8th April 1978
“For ten minutes, he thought it was love. The saxophone was that convincing.”
The heat inside the Rugby Club Disco had reached a critical point—half condensation, half hormones. Somewhere near the DJ booth, a papier-mâché pineapple was shedding sequins. The lights blinked. Glitter stuck to the armpits. And Sharon Fox was already up on a chair.
Hair like a failed perm caught in an electrical storm. She wasn’t dancing to the music. She was the music. Or at least, the brass section of “Boogie Wonderland.”
Robbie, sticky with Newkie Brown and unsupervised bravado, found himself pulled toward her orbit. Not because he wanted her—not exactly. But because Sharon made being visible look like liberation. And for a boy who had just discovered his face in the mirror, minus a brace, that was a drug in itself.
They collided on the floor. It wasn’t a dance so much as a friction experiment. Elbows. Knees. Sweat. Denim against polyester. There was a moment, just after she ground her pelvis into his hip with the confidence of a nightclub hostess, when someone clapped. Another moment later, Trisha vomited. On him. Mostly.
It didn’t seem to matter.
Then came “Baker Street.”
The saxophone slid in like a slow-motion invitation. Sharon grabbed him. Closer. One hand round the back of his neck, her fingers sticky with cider or lip gloss or both. She kissed him.
And Robbie, urged on by the crowd, the music, the adrenaline of doing something bold, kissed her back.
It was immediate. It was unfiltered. And it was, as he would later write in his diary, “like kissing an ashtray in a heatwave.”
Her mouth tasted of Benson & Hedges. Her breath was all throat. Her upper lip felt—he couldn’t be sure—like it had been shaved. Not closely. Just enough to register. Enough to trigger a strange new awareness: not everyone was soft. Not everyone wants to be kissed.
He pulled away too fast, stumbled backwards into someone’s discarded coat. Sharon blinked once, then barked a laugh that made his stomach drop. She turned and danced with someone else. Maybe on someone else.
Robbie walked home alone.
The night air felt like punishment. His shirt clung. His jeans squelched faintly where Trisha had made her mark. The scent of lager, cigarettes, and L’Oréal clung to his hair.
His lungs were tightening. The wheeze beneath his breath reminded him that smoking—even to look cool in front of India Armstrong-Jones. Kissing Sharon had confirmed it.
Robbie (2028):
“Sharon was like a nightclub firework. Loud, reckless, briefly dazzling. But the kiss? It was smoke and ash and someone else’s lipstick. I wasn’t ready. Or prepared. Or expecting it.”
Kizzy (2028):
“You borrowed the trousers. You borrowed the swagger. But the kiss was all yours. And now you know what polyester regret smells like.”
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