‘We moved in after one date’

Jade and Claire matched on Tinder and decided to live together after just one romantic meeting.

After meeting on the dating app, before the Covid 19 pandemic, the pair switched their conversation to Snapchat – where Claire decided she needed to “hook her in” and organise a date at her local pub in Edinburgh.

“And then you opened it, and the rest is history”, Claire smiles at Jade.

“I’d been on a lot of bad dates and I’d sort of given up a bit. I wanted something real”, she adds, noting that she wanted to organise something within her “comfort zone” where her “friends were working behind the bar.”

“Off I went, skipping away”, Jade laughs, as she recalls their first meeting.

“Inside, I was more nervous than I let on or told Claire because the last time I went to Edinburgh I got knocked out. I was homophobically assaulted by a guy. I was knocked out for six minutes, I had broken teeth, a broken nose.”

However, Jade hadn’t told Claire about her traumatic experience yet because she was waiting to see how the date went.

“We got on really well, and obviously we discussed the pandemic, said we’d get a second date if it happens”, Claire adds. It was then that Jade jokingly said she’d come and pick her up, like “Shaun of the Dead, be ready.”

“And then we were like, were we joking about that?”, Claire recalls.

“I didn’t ask, I just said ‘I’m coming to get you, my apartment’s getting locked down at 7 tonight so you better be ready’”, Jade explains.

Reflecting on their last-minute decision, Claire says: “There was a silver lining [to the pandemic] because we were given time you would never, ever have to do nothing.”

The couple couldn’t go on normal dates, but they did things like “swing dancing, walking or teaching each other different things.”

“Everything was stripped away and it was just us.”