Obviously, the main highlight and the reason for all my incredible memories of that TV experience was that I did find my boyfriend in there. Tommy and I felt almost meant to be in so many ways: I found out that he lived five minutes away from me in Manchester, we’re both born in May, and we’re the exact same age. I also met Maura in there, who’s one of my best friends now.
I love that I have the moment I met my forever partner on video to share with my kids one day.
‘How did you and Dad meet?’
‘Oh, I’ll show you …!’
That’s really nice. I’m so blessed and lucky to have been able to have that experience. But in terms of the very first meeting – when Tommy and I shared a hot tub on our first ‘date’ – I’ve not watched that specific part back that many times, because I find it quite cringey: our conversation was actually mortifying! But it’s really nice to watch back other clips, from challenges to our first kiss. What I see on-screen does match up with my memories – how it felt to be in those moments – pretty well.
I had decided, before I went into the villa, that I wasn’t going to do anything on camera that I wouldn’t do in public. But obviously, while we were in there, Tommy and I were getting really, really close. I hadn’t expected it, but I now had a boyfriend! And when I came out, the fact that my love life had been on national telly was never a problem with my family – I never really spoke about it with them (thank goodness) or anyone else in my life, so it wasn’t an issue. But I can’t watch those scenes back!
That all being said … Love Island was challenging at times over those eight weeks in the villa. Maybe because I met Tommy and Maura, people don’t realise that. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great experience – but it was more difficult in there than people may think.
For someone like me, who was already my own boss and used to running my own life, it was a shock to find, suddenly, you don’t know when you’re going to bed, you don’t know when you’re waking up, you don’t really even have control over your meals. I actually never knew the hour of the day the whole time I was there. There are no clocks in the villa – even the one on the oven was covered up – so you lose all concept of time. Each morning, we would wake up, brush our teeth and then go down and sit on the beanbags in the garden, waiting to have a conversation they’d want to air, or to do one of the show’s challenges. I don’t mean any of this in a bad way – they were making a TV show, and that is a time-consuming, complicated process – but it was a challenging two months for me.
I’d also been away from home an extra two weeks before all that – the longest I’d ever been away from my family and friends. Bearing in mind, too, that my phone was my job, so it was never out of my sight, and then I had it taken away from me for 11 weeks altogether. I didn’t enjoy having time off from it! We were given special phones to use while we were in there: we couldn’t use them like normal phones, but I was taking pictures every day of me and Tommy, the girls, me in the mirror. The show sent a few from the camera roll to my sister, who posted them on my Instagram.
I definitely learned a lot; being there changed me as a person. I learned how to be away from home for that length of time and to deal with feeling homesick. I wasn’t about to leave, so I just had to bear that feeling and be OK with it.
And I had to learn to be fine without my phone, if needs be. (Although, I don’t think I’d go another few months without it! My mum and dad will still say to me, ‘Get off your phone,’ and to some people it might look like I’m being antisocial, but the reality is, I run a business from it.)
Obviously, because I met Tommy, it made it all a lot easier. But I can imagine for the girls that don’t find someone who they get really close to in there, it can be really hard.
If I thought being inside the villa was tough, I was about to find out that life outside of it could be challenging in a very different way.
My sister, Zoe, had been managing my socials while I was in the villa. Because she knew me so well, she knew what I’d want to be put on Instagram, so she was in charge. But the hate got so bad when I was in there – the trolling really was on another level – that a friend of mine recommended Fran, who’s now my manager. She and her team really helped Zoe. They worked closely together, and my family fell in love with Fran.
Of course, I didn’t know any of this. Meanwhile, new bombshells were coming into the villa saying, ‘Oh, you’re managed by Fran, of The Social PR?’ (They’d seen Fran’s email in my bio on my socials.) I didn’t know who that was, so I was freaking out to the producers, saying, ‘You need to tell me now what’s going on with my Instagram because this is my job. My family are meddling with my job!’
It wouldn’t have mattered so much if I weren’t such a perfectionist with my Instagram, but I thought that my family had appointed a new manager without asking me for no good reason, and I didn’t know what was going on – it was awful. But the producers wouldn’t tell me anything.
Then, as part of the show, the Islanders get to see their relatives, and my mum and sister came onto the show to visit me. I tried to find out what was happening. ‘What’s going on with my Instagram? Who’s this person who’s managing me?’ But they just said they’d tell me when I came out and I was so frustrated.
My sister, bless her, knew how much I wanted to know what was happening with my business. I was looking at her, saying, ‘Zoe, what’s going on – how many followers have I got?’
Quietly, she drew the shape of 2.2 – for 2.2 million – on her leg. I was stunned. Oh my God! I remember her nodding: It’s good. But I did also get a sense of It’s good and it’s bad; it’s a lot.
What that meant, I found out on the day of the final. Before the live final ceremony itself, Tommy and I were watching TV – we weren’t meant to, but the crew had forgotten to take the remote out of our bedroom! So we watched a breakfast TV show, where they were talking about Love Island, of all things.
At that point, I think it’s fair to say that the general feeling inside the villa was that Tommy and I had probably won. Because we were the only people in the show that had connected the way we had, become girlfriend and boyfriend, and had this story in the way we had, it maybe seemed the most likely outcome. (Of course, we’d end up as the runners-up to Amber and Greg. I honestly didn’t care – I was happy for them – because for me, it had never been about winning. I already felt like I’d won because I had met Tommy, and I’d never expected to get a boyfriend and to leave the show together.)
Then I watched that breakfast TV segment … and that changed everything. The message was: everyone hates Molly, she cries crocodile tears, she’s fake, she doesn’t like Tommy, she’s only in there for the money. It was really, really, really savage. Tommy and I just sat there watching TV, feeling like … Oh.
After all that time, suddenly I wasn’t ready to get my phone back and connect with the outside world. I was scared. I thought, All of that’s been going on – what have I done wrong? Because I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, but clearly people hadn’t engaged with me the way I’d hoped or the way I’d thought they had. Today, I feel quite differently about all that – as I’ll explain later. But back in that hotel room, in the moment where I saw that segment, I really was thinking, Oh gosh, what’s happening?
There were a few other moments that underlined just what was ahead. Just before the final, we all left the villa to go and get ready in a hotel. There was a lot of security around, but at one point Tommy and I were in a lift together. The doors opened and there were two young boys stood outside. Their faces literally dropped to the floor, like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. I think for them, it was probably more about Tommy than me! But that really resonated with me: Oh my God, people know who my boyfriend is. They’re going to know who I am. This is actually what things are going to be like now.
By this point, I was really nervous and fearful about what I was about to face when I would finally be given my phone back. Mine wasn’t even really working at the start – it was basically broken by having to start up again after being turned off for so long! In the meantime, my Instagram had gone from 160k to nearly 3 million followers. How does your phone even begin to catch up with that?
It was the best feeling in the world to get it back – but also a bit of a reality check, even then. Because as much as I was so happy to have my phone back, as Tommy and I were sitting on our beds on our phones, I realised, Real life’s back. Before, we’d have been talking to each other, because we had nothing else to do. That bubble bursts so quickly: real life hits the moment you get your phone back, and that’s it – you’re out of your little dreamland that never really existed.
After all, in what world would you spend eight weeks with the guy you just met, sharing a bed straight away, no phones, no family, no one there? It just doesn’t happen. I’d not even Instagram-stalked Tommy before I met him! It was like a blind date.
Now, it was time to get back to the real world.