By the time Friday evening rolled around, I was prepared to call the working week, tennis-ball assaults aside, a success. I had Snazz’s first podcast guests confirmed, the art department was working on the logo and the marketing team was shouting about our live recording at WESC (which I now knew stood for the World E-Sports Championships) reaching even the deepest, darkest little corners of the internet. Basement-dwellers would be risking the outside world from far and wide to get a glimpse at Snazzlechuff, live and in person. Even I had found myself wondering if he’d get a new mask made. There was a minor bump in the road when I tried to get Veronica to schedule in some rehearsal time but she insisted that he didn’t need it, that too much prep would ‘fucking ruin the magic’. When I raised it with Ted, he advised me that the magician works in mysterious ways and so, I had left it alone. It had been such a long time since I’d felt good about myself at work, knowing I was killing it was such a high.
At exactly five thirty, I switched my casual Friday Converse for a pair of black patent heels, checked my concealer, closed up my computer and bolted for the door. Patrick had rented some obscure French movie from his very cool video club and we had made plans to watch it at mine. After leaving the tennis club, I’d spent all evening pimping the place out to prepare for his arrival: new sheets, new wine glasses, knock-off Jo Malone candles I’d sent Mum all the way to Aldi to procure. As long as I kept the light low and the smell of the compostable toilet out of the bedroom, I truly believed I could pass off my current predicament as sexily bohemian. And if the candles weren’t enough to distract him, I’d also spent my following week’s food budget on a pair of stockings and suspenders that were definitely more six-star hotel suite than one-star shed. I needed about three hours to get into them but it would be worth it.
I was fifteen minutes into a mindless run around the M&S Foodhall when my phone rang with Patrick’s name lighting up the screen.
‘Hey, hi,’ I beamed. ‘I was just thinking about you.’
‘Warm thoughts, I hope,’ he replied. ‘What time are you coming over tonight?’
I dropped a packet of prosciutto in my trolley and frowned.
‘I thought you were coming to me?’
‘Really? I thought you were coming here,’ he said. ‘I was going to make you dinner.’
‘I was going to make you dinner,’ I countered, hand hovering over a pre-packaged cheese selection. ‘You said you’d come to me because it’s Lucy’s baby shower tomorrow and it’s easier to get there from my place. Remember?’
He gave a long groan of recognition. ‘Ohhh, the baby shower is tomorrow? I thought that was next week? My brain is like a sieve.’
‘Lucy’s baby shower is this weekend,’ I confirmed. ‘Next weekend is my mum and dad’s vow renewal.’
‘And what’s the weekend after that?’ he laughed. ‘Your milkman’s cousin’s bar mitzvah?’
‘The weekend after that is my birthday,’ I said quietly, putting back the cheese.
‘I know that, I’m just joking,’ Patrick replied. ‘You sound tired. Why don’t you come here tonight and let me look after you?’
‘Because you said you’d come to mine,’ I said in as hushed a tone as I could manage. I would not be one of those women who had a full-volume slanging match on the phone in the supermarket. At least not in M&S, what would my mother think? ‘Come on, Patrick, it’s going to be nice, I was going to buy cheese?’
I would not give in. He was coming to my shed if I had to drug him and drag him and that was almost definitely illegal or, at the very least, frowned upon.
‘Ros, don’t take this the wrong way but this week has been a nightmare and I don’t think I can deal with roommates tonight.’
I stopped in the middle of the aisle.
‘I don’t have any roommates,’ I said, confused. ‘What are you talking about?’
A pause.
‘You don’t?’
‘I’m staying at my parents’ house until I find a flat. I must have told you ten times.’
‘That’s what I meant,’ he replied confidently. ‘I meant your roommate-parents. I didn’t want to offend you but the idea of dealing with anyone’s mum and dad after the week I’ve had is just too much. Come to me, I’ll open some wine, make some pasta, pull out the projector. I’ll make you your own private cinema. It’ll be wonderful.’
It did sound wonderful, or at least it would have sounded wonderful if we hadn’t already made plans.
‘I can’t, all my stuff for tomorrow is at home,’ I explained slowly, calmly. ‘And it doesn’t make any sense to go all the way back home and then come all the way back across London just to go all the way back again in the morning. The baby shower is ten minutes from my mum and dad’s place.’
‘Then we’ll get it in the morning on the way,’ Patrick replied. ‘Look, you’ve clearly had a hell of day. Has that Snazz upset you or something? You never used to get this stressed out about little things.’
‘I’m not stressing out about little things,’ I said, grabbing the cheese. I didn’t care if we were sharing it or I ate the entire thing myself, either way, it was coming home with me. ‘I told Sumi we would be at the baby shower early to help her set up because you said you wanted to help.’
‘You know what, I am really exhausted,’ he said with a forced yawn. ‘Why don’t we watch the film tomorrow night instead?’
I felt my frustration rising. It was reasonable that he wanted to stay home after a long week but it was also reasonable for me to expect him to stick to our plans, especially when those plans made the most sense for the following day. My grip tightened around the handle of the basket.
‘After the baby shower,’ he added. ‘Which is in my diary and I am very excited about.’
‘Really?’
Patrick huffed down the line. ‘Rosalind Reynolds, I can’t believe you would doubt me.’
I rubbed my nose on the back of my hand to drive away any threatening tears. Frustration always made me tear up. Frustration, anger and any time there was an elderly dog in an advert.
‘Now, you go home and relax, put your feet up, have a bubble bath or something and I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t worry about coming over here, I’ll be fine on my own. I’ll meet you at the party whenever you want me there.’
I looked down at my high heels and thought about the twenty minutes I’d spent applying false eyelashes in the PodPad toilets and about the stockings and suspenders, wedged on top of the bathroom cabinet in the shed. What a waste.
‘I’ll miss you tonight though,’ Patrick murmured, chasing away my annoyance.
‘Good,’ I told him, my annoyance building again as he laughed down the line. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
My phone beeped to confirm he’d ended the call.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I stared into the cheese fridge. I had two choices. One, fill my basket with dairy delights, go home and try not to make eye contact with my redundant lingerie. Or, two, abandon my shopping and find an adventure.
‘It’s Friday, I’m wearing false eyelashes and cheese backs me up,’ I accidentally declared to an unsuspecting shelf stocker. ‘Time for an adventure.’
‘It gives me the runs,’ clucked a little old lady at the side of me. ‘You get off out while you’re young.’ She picked up a block of Wensleydale and looked me up and down. ‘Well, fairly young.’
And there it was, decision made.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked Sumi, clambering out of the taxi and following her blindly down an alleyway. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’
‘Because if I tell you, you won’t want to do it and I’ll let you talk me out of it and we’ll end up at mine, completely rat-arsed, you whining about Patrick, me buying shoes I can’t afford and both of us hungover for the baby shower tomorrow,’ she replied. Sumi had thought this through.
‘I will want to do it,’ I promised even though I clearly had no way of knowing if that was in fact true. ‘It doesn’t matter what it is.’
She marched on, lips firmly clamped together.
‘Is it a quiz night?’
No response. It was a fair guess though, Sumi loved quizzes. Mostly because she was much cleverer than anyone else in the world and quiz nights were the only place she could really let that light shine without feeling like an arse.
‘Immersive theatre experience where we all have to pretend we’re squirrels?’
I could have sworn I’d read about that happening somewhere round here on Time Out.
‘Lesbian board game night?’
‘What’s a lesbian board game?’ she asked.
‘Monopoly but instead of buying property and going to prison you buy Birkenstocks and have to go to Ikea.’
‘I have never in my life worn a Birkenstock,’ she gasped, glancing down at her Guccis to make sure they hadn’t heard. ‘And I’d rather go to prison than Ikea.’
‘Ikea has better food,’ I argued.
‘Just barely,’ she sniffed. ‘Those meatballs are gross, they’re fake news.’
‘Blasphemy,’ I whispered under my breath.
‘We are here,’ Sumi announced, stopping in front of the nondescript door of an ordinary building. ‘After you.’
‘Is it an escape room?’ I asked, my pulse suddenly racing. ‘Because I should warn you, I’m not allowed in those.’
‘No it isn’t, and what do you mean you’re not allowed?’
‘We went to one as a team-building exercise in DC,’ I explained as she gently pushed me through the door. ‘And I got slightly over-competitive and made one of the other girls cry.’
She gave me a look.
‘You couldn’t make me cry if you tried,’ she said, as much of a threat as a promise.
‘Where are we?’ I asked again, the distant sound of music thrumming through the floorboards.
‘It’s a dark disco,’ she replied, handing two tickets to a man who appeared to be watching a beauty tutorial on his iPhone. He swapped her the tickets for two bottles of water and cocked his head towards a narrow death trap of a staircase behind him. ‘We’re going to dance.’
‘Like, a goth disco?’ I looked back at the staircase and wondered if it truly was steep enough to finish me off. Because if it was a choice between that and an entire evening of swishing around to The Cure, I couldn’t honestly say which was the better option.
‘No, you knob. A dark disco, a disco that takes place in the dark.’ Sumi grinned as we heaved our way upstairs. ‘It’s the best thing ever, they play the most amazing music and you can dance however you want because it’s pitch black, no one can see you. You’re literally dancing as though nobody is watching.’
I clutched my water bottle to my chest.
‘Is this a sex thing?’
‘You’re thinking of a dark room,’ she replied. ‘And no. At least, it wasn’t last time I came. It’s incredibly freeing. You can dance your arse off to Taylor Swift without worrying what anyone else thinks. Last time I was here they did a full hour of Spice Girls songs and, I swear, I thought someone had slipped some Molly into my drink I was so happy.’
‘And you’re sure they hadn’t?’ I asked before carefully inspecting the tamper-proof seal on my own water bottle.
‘Unlikely, it’s a sober party.’
It took a minute for the words to register.
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s a sober party,’ Sumi repeated. ‘No booze, no drugs.’
I almost fainted clean away.
‘Is there at least fizzy pop and Haribo?’
‘Ros,’ Sumi wedged her water bottle under her armpit and took both of my hands in hers. ‘There is only water. You will survive, you will dance and you will feel amazing. We need to seize these moments while we can. One day, we’ll have different responsibilities, we won’t be able to randomly nick off to a disco without a care in the world.’
‘We won’t?’ I asked. What was she talking about?
‘We will not,’ she confirmed. ‘Trust me, you’re going to love this. And if you’re very good, I’ll buy you a Nando’s on the way home.’
‘Won’t Nando’s be closed on the way home?’ I asked, allowing her to lead me towards a heavy black curtain.
‘Dark Disco ends at nine,’ she answered. ‘You’ll be home by ten, asleep by eleven and I swear it’ll be the best night’s sleep you’ve ever had in your life. You can thank me tomorrow when you’re incredibly grateful not to have to deal with Lucy’s baby-mama friends with a hangover.’
‘I don’t think I’ve been dancing sober since I was fourteen,’ I said, weirdly nervous as I handed my backpack over to a much friendlier-looking woman, standing behind a folding table.
Sumi snorted with laughter. ‘It’s just dancing, Ros, not shagging, which you definitely want to be drunk for. At least the first time. Or for the first three years, depending.’
I followed her through the curtains into a small vestibule where the music suddenly became much louder. I had to find out what kind of curtains these were, I thought, fingering the heavy velvet with admiration. Maybe they’d help class up the shed a bit.
‘My name is Jeremy, I work here at Dark Disco and, before I let you in, I’m going to run you through the rules,’ said a mystery voice. I could still see Sumi’s outline and a few stray chinks of light found her heavy silver necklace, covering her in stars. ‘Once you get inside, it’ll take a minute for your eyes to adjust to the low light conditions. Until they do, we suggest reserving your big dance moves. There is likely to be some accidental bumping into people but we do not condone unwelcome touching—’
‘How will we know the difference?’ asked a male voice.
‘Oh, you’ll know,’ Sumi replied before Jeremy could.
‘If you are touched in a way you do not find acceptable, in the first instance, please inform the person touching you that it is unwelcome as it could still be accidental. If it continues—’
‘Kick him in the bollocks?’ I suggested.
Sumi held up her hand for a high five which I just managed to hit.
‘Violence of any kind will not be condoned,’ Jeremy said firmly. ‘If unwelcome touching continues, please come back here and inform either myself or Mary on the bag check-in. There is a night-vision camera installed in the disco for your safety although it will only be looked at if we have any complaints.’
‘Yeah, this sounds like it’s going to be a right barrel of laughs,’ I whispered to Sumi. ‘How did you even hear about it?’
‘Wait until you get in there, it’s amazing,’ she replied while Jeremy placed neon wristbands on everyone’s wrists. Mine was orange. Sumi’s was pink. We immediately switched. ‘John brought me and Ade a few months ago, I think one of his friends runs it? We had to drag John out at the end, you wouldn’t think it but he’s the full Saturday Night Fever. Surprisingly good dancer for a tall man.’
Jeremy clapped his hands loudly. ‘Are we all ready to disco in the dark?’
Everyone cheered with varying degrees of enthusiasm and a second pair of black curtains opened, leading through to a pitch-black room where the party was already well under way. The bass thumped so loud, I could feel it vibrating from the floor, through the slender heels of my shoes and up my legs. My chest pounded with the music as my heartbeat was forced into a new rhythm.
‘Sumi?’ I yelled, totally thrown by just how dark it really was. ‘Where are you?’
‘Just dance!’ she shouted back. ‘Just let go!’
I watched her orange neon bracelet drift away from me, bobbing up and down as she air-punched her way across the dance floor.
I loved dancing as much as the next person, in that I danced when I was drunk or heard a Beyoncé song. When I was a teenager, we made up routines to every song on the charts and practised them until there wasn’t a single drop of joy left in Britney Spears’s entire back catalogue. Even two decades on, I couldn’t hear ‘Hit Me Baby, One More Time’ without bursting into the exact choreography we’d recorded off Top of the Pops. I couldn’t put an exact date on when we stopped going dancing every weekend – one minute we were hobbling home with our arms around each other, barefoot with our shoes in our hands, and the next we were putting each other in taxis and saying goodnight right after dinner. Maybe it was when we realized half the girls in the club were a clear decade younger than us, or maybe when working all week and going out all weekend became too much for our bodies to handle. And for some of my friends, a night at home was much more appealing when there was a significant other waiting for them there.
But this was a different kind of game. I didn’t need any warm-up drinks to find the confidence to bust out my moves, there was no scanning the dance floor to find a safe space, away from the good dancers and the hot girls and the stag parties and the drunks. Everywhere was a safe space when no one could see you.
Slowly, I began to move from side to side, hips moving gently at first, my calf-length silky skirt swishing against my skin. Before I knew it, my arms had loosed themselves from my sides and began to swing back and forth above my head. I felt incredible. I was Britney, Beyoncé and Lizzo all rolled into one. Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before?
With my eyes closed, I rolled and gyrated and, God help me, twerked on the spot, occasionally skipping across to another part of the room, just because I could. I hadn’t felt this powerful on a dance floor since that time I got smashed on three-for-two Bacardi Breezers in the student union and decided to leap on stage and perform an interpretative dance rendition of the Grease megamix. I felt so free, I felt so young, I felt – someone crash into me.
‘Fuck, I’m sorry,’ a voice said, immediately backing away, their striped blue and green bracelet moving across the floor.
‘That’s OK,’ I replied, as I waved the stranger on with a thumbs up even though he couldn’t see my gesture. Maybe it was best to keep my eyes open, I decided. With slightly more awareness, I slipped back into my groove as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Now I could make out shadowy shapes of human beings as they rolled and thrust to the music, just the outlines of their bodies, like shadows moving to a Motown beat.
The more I surrendered to the music, the further away my problems felt. No need to worry about work, no need to wonder where I was going to live. Why concern myself with Mum and Dad’s second wedding and Jo’s antics and Nana’s casual bigotry? Even my existential angst felt far away. So what if I couldn’t bring myself to look at a newspaper? Sure, climate change was destroying the planet but we could figure it out! All that mattered was the music and the dancing and not getting twatted in the face again.
Only one niggling doubt remained.
Patrick.
I was annoyed he had backed out on our plans and I was annoyed that I’d let him get away with it so easily. Was it a mix-up or could he just not be bothered? Like Sumi had said when he sent that first text, he’d always had a tendency to be a little callous, a little carefree with other people’s plans and feelings. But he wasn’t malicious, he wouldn’t let me down. Would he? No. So what if he was a bit flaky? These were simply growing pains, bumps in the road that would be smoothed out by time. For a moment I considered going back out to get my bag to text him. This was the kind of thing he’d get a kick out of. Not that he was a big dancer but he’d definitely enjoy a dark disco. Probably. Maybe in an ironic sense. I felt my arms sliding back down towards my waist in the time-honoured tradition of your mum dancing at her work’s Christmas party.
‘No,’ I whispered to myself, forcing all thoughts of my sort-of-boyfriend out of my head and throwing my arms back up in the air, waving them around like I just didn’t care, hoping that if I kept it up, it would become true again.
Before I knew it, my body was dripping with sweat, my black camisole sticking to me like a second skin as I sang out the words to every single song. We could have been in there for fifteen minutes or fifteen hours, I had no idea. Sumi was right, you didn’t need a drink to do this and you definitely didn’t need drugs. If I was any higher, I’d be a kite.
Someone’s unknown body part bumped into my hip while I was gyrating wildly to some vintage Prince, knocking me out of my euphoria for just a moment.
‘Sorry,’ a male voice yelled over the music.
‘No worries,’ I called back, dancing towards the tall, slender shape. In the misty darkness, I could just about make out a smile as we tentatively orbited each other. A long dormant flutter came to life in my chest. How long had it been since I danced with a stranger in a club?
Slowly, we moved closer and closer until I had my back pressed up against his front and his hands rested on my hips. Every moment of contact connected sharply; there was no booze in me to make my decisions fuzzy but the darkness kept reality at a safe distance. It felt so good, leaning into his solid chest, to move with someone, to connect with another body. And it was just dancing, no big deal, nothing to feel guilty about.
The music switched to a classic Madonna song and suddenly my hips took on a life of their own. I felt myself twist and turn, grinding against my partner and finding him more than up to the challenge. Without really thinking, I turned around, looping my arms around his neck as my skirt rode up above my knees to make room for his thigh between my legs. We swayed back and forth, skin on skin, sweat mingling with sweat as the gospel chorus kicked in, the two of us moving together in time to the music. Life is a mystery, indeed.
It’s only dancing, my mind whispered, my eyes closed and my body on fire as the sound of everyone singing drowned out the song and the pounding of my heart drowned out the voices of everyone singing around us. His hands moved down my back, slipping lower, his warm breath against my cheek …
And then without warning, the song ended and the music stopped. My dance partner and I froze, still pressed together, panting, sweating, on the precipice of something.
‘That’s a wrap on another Dark Disco, thanks for coming, everyone,’ a voice boomed through the speakers. ‘We’ll be back next month, hope we won’t be seeing you!’
And then the lights came on, unflattering fluorescent strip lights that were no one’s friend. I looked up at the man’s face and gasped.
‘John?’
I dropped him faster than if he’d been on fire. Staggering backwards, I pulled my skirt back into place, searching for the right words, but I was still half lost in another world.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, holding out a hand.
‘There you are.’ Sumi, glassy-eyed, sweaty and utterly euphoric, bounced across the dance floor as everyone else began to filter out towards the doors. ‘John! I wondered if you’d be here, we came last minute. How brilliant was that? I wish they would do it every week. Once a month is not enough.’
John and I were still staring at each other, him looking more than a little confused and me feeling utterly mortified. He pushed damp, messy hair away from his face, recovering just enough to give Sumi a smile.
‘Yeah, great one,’ he agreed, eyes drifting back in my direction. ‘Glad you had a good time. I’ve got to go, see you tomorrow, yeah?’
‘OK, weirdo.’ Sumi pulled a face at me as John turned around and bolted for the door. Bouncing up and down on the spot, she grinned at me madly. ‘Don’t know what’s wrong with him. Did you love it? Was it the best thing ever?’
‘So good,’ I replied, forcing weak enthusiasm into my voice.
‘Ready for a Nando’s?’ she asked.
‘Always,’ I replied, forcing a smile and pushing away difficult thoughts I wasn’t ready to deal with.