When I met Danny, it was instant sparks.

We met, of course, on Hinge. (Because, where else but dating apps do you find single guys now, without having to awkwardly tell a work mate that their best friend may be single, and may be a great person, but is that bowl cut some kind of ironic throwback, or...?)

Danny asked me on a date within an hour of us matching. Usually, I wouldn't have met up with someone so quickly, but maybe that was why I'd agreed to it. All the other guys I'd met off dating apps had been after weeks of messaging, and had all fizzled out after a handful of dates. Maybe I'd just save myself a lot of time, meeting Danny for dinner that same weekend.

I was a little put off by the state of his house share – the line of empty beer bottles on a windowsill in the hallway, the mess of mop buckets and a Henry hoover and packets of toilet roll in the open space beneath the stairs, the cobweb in the corner by the doorway... But it all paled to insignificant in the glow of a perfect first date as he cooked me a three-course dinner.

We just... clicked.

Talking to some of my friends, we all waited with bated breath for things to go wrong. Such a perfect first date was so rare, something had to change.

Guys like that didn't just exist. Dates like that didn't just happen.

It'd all go south sooner or later; even my most optimistic friends said so.

But we went out for drinks and tapas. He talked in conversational Spanish to the waiter, who gave us a free jug of sangria because of it. We went bowling, and even though he was pretty atrocious and I'm competitive almost to a fault, he was such a good sport about it that I hardly stopped smiling all night. The first time we spent the night together, after our fourth date, he didn't hog the duvet or snore in his sleep and even got up to make me breakfast the next morning.

"You're obsessed with him," a couple of my friends told me, after that.

They were probably right, but could you blame me?

He was perfect.

And every time I saw him, I got butterflies. I'd hear my phone buzz with a message and lunge for it, hoping it was him. He'd kiss me, and I'd go weak at the knees. I'd go more than two days without seeing him, and I'd be going stir crazy.

"Do you think he's lost interest? Do you think it's because I didn't get that joke he told, about Han Solo? Do you think he's annoyed at me because I told him I couldn't make it out for drinks because I was too tired from tennis? Look! He put a red heart emoji at the end of this text when he said goodnight! Do you think that means something? It's got to mean something. It means something, right? I know he said he was having a boys' night but we've only been dating for like two weeks, we never said we were exclusive, what if that's code for something and he's actually out with another girl on a date? Ohmigod look at this meme Danny tagged me in, it is so us! Isn't that amazing that we've only been together a little while and we already have an 'us'? I just love that, don't you think it's the cutest thing?"

"Isla," whichever friend I was bothering that day with stories about Danny would say, "chill the fuck out. You're obsessed. It's like listening to Carrie freak out over Big, only worse."

I might've been offended, if I wasn't so loved up with Danny.

Well, 'loved up' was maybe... maybe the teensiest exaggeration. We'd only been dating a couple of weeks. You couldn't just start throwing around The L Word that early on.

But Danny was exactly the sort of guy I could see myself falling in love with.

I already was falling in love with him.

And I got the impression he felt the same way. I could just tell. It was in the way he kissed me, the way he asked when my lunch break was so he could take his at the same time and video call me. I could tell when he brought me flowers last week, and when, the last time I went to visit, the line of beer bottles on the windowsill had disappeared.

I could lie awake for hours or end up daydreaming at work. His parents would love me the first time we met, I always make a great first impression on parents... He loved dogs and so did I, we both had Golden Retrievers growing up and had always wanted one when we were grown-up... He was always so polite, and such a good cook, my mum would adore him, and he was even into Formula 1 just like my dad and brothers were, they'd get on so well... We both even wanted three kids, the first by the time we were thirty...

How could I not be falling in love with him?

We were perfect together.

***

Only, it doesn't feel quite so perfect right now.

If anything, I'm really starting to see what the Islanders mean in the Love Island villa every year. This whole living together thing is intense. Four days is nothing, really, I know that: and yet somehow, it feels like it's been weeks since Danny 'moved in'.

I don't know if I'll be able to stomach it, if the building lockdown extends past this week.

Although, that said, if it does, I'm so glad we're stuck here in my flat, and not in Danny's house share. It's currently empty: his two housemates haven't been around for the last week – one had moved back in with his parents when this whole pandemic mess started, and the other is stuck in Sydney with his girlfriend, trying to get a flight back.

I guess I'm also lucky we're stuck in my flat, and not back and forth an airport and hotel at the other end of the world.

It's not so much Danny, I guess.

(After my blow-up yesterday and our talk on the balcony, I'm willing to admit that it's got to be just as difficult for him as it is for me to be in this situation, and it's less Danny than the whole situation.)

Mainly, I'd just like a little of my own space back.

This morning, I got up as quietly as I could, trying not to disturb Danny. I kept the volume low on my workout video. I went out onto the balcony with a cup of green tea and it was just so quiet.

It was blissful.

Right now, I wish I could go back to that moment. I'm sat cross-legged on my bed trying to focus on a team call, but can hear Danny on the phone in the next room. He's got the meeting on loudspeaker while he paces around. I can hear every crackly voice, muffled by the bedroom door, and his heavy footsteps tromping back and forth. I'm scowling, which I don't realise until I catch sight of myself in the little window on Zoom.

My boss notices, though, pausing to say, "Everything alright, Isla? C'mon, we didn't think the new design was that bad..."

There's a polite chuckle through my headphones, and I make the effort to smile and compose my face. "Oh, no, nothing! Just er, my boyfriend. He's on a meeting in the living room and it's a bit distracting."

There are murmurs of sympathy.

Kaylie, who's about ten years older than me, lets out a brash laugh and says, "Just be grateful you don't have kids! Honestly, I know I'm supposed to be making the effort to home-school them right now, but I sat them down in front of some Disney cartoon with some biscuits just so I could do one meeting in peace!"

As if to prove the point of how distracted we're all getting right now, my manager's cat leaps up onto her lap with a noisy hiss, winding around the headphone wire and then tromping all over the keyboard to shouts of, "No! No, no, no, Zee, come on, get – don't – stop – Salazar Slytherhiss you get down right now or –"

Our boss vanishes into blackness.

The three of us sit awkwardly on the call for a moment, waiting for her to deal with the cat and come back on the call.

I'm glad for the interruption to be honest: it gives me a moment to check over the slide deck that got sent out and re-focus, still doing my best to block out the noise of Danny's meeting across the hall.

Our boss pops back up.

"Alright, sorry about that! Where were we? Right, Joe, you were just talking us through the revamped branding message..."

And Joe, our usually very introverted and shy design guy, blurts incredulously, looking deeply judgemental, "I'm sorry, but Zee the Cat is short for Salazar Slytherhiss? And you never told us this?" – and just like that, I'm oblivious to all the distractions in my flat and in fits of giggles.

My phone buzzes a few seconds later.

A text from Danny.

'Do you mind keeping it down a little bit, please?'

I shoot back a middle finger emoji, but after my meeting I make us both a cup of tea and kiss him on the cheek, and ask him to use his Air Pods next time he's got a meeting.

See? I can do this. I can totally be a grown-up about this, and make this all work.

Just because we're suddenly living together and it's such a new relationship, that doesn't have to spoil things, or change things too quickly. If anything, I think with a smile, maybe it'll just help move our relationship along.

After all – if we can make it through all of this, maybe we're meant to be.

I think it again, when he takes a break from work to snuggle on the sofa and watch some of an episode of Too Hot To Handle with me, even though he already told me on the weekend how much it annoys him and isn't his kind of thing.

I think it again, when I FaceTime my family out on the balcony, and he comes out to join me and say hello to them all, even though (as I'd warned him) it meant he was subjected to an embarrassing interrogation under the guise of: "Oh, Isla, stop pulling that face! We're just being nice and asking him questions! Now where did you say your mother went to school, Danny?" – and he takes it all with a good-natured smile, and teases me about it afterwards.

And I think it again, when we're in bed that night, and even though he's fast asleep next to me, he pulls me close into his arms, and I realise there's nowhere else I'd rather be, and there's definitely nobody else I'd rather be in lockdown with.

And that's the end of Part 2! Hope you guys enjoyed seeing how Danny and Isla are finding lockdown on London Lane - and the little sneak peek of how Serena and Zach are coping. More on them next week, in Part 3: The Pineapple Problem!

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Until next Tuesday...!