Imagine flying thousands of miles to Majorca to find love on Love Island only to realise that your perfect partner had been half an hour down the road all along. Well, that’s exactly what happened to Love Island 2024 runners-up Nicole Samuel and Ciaran Davies.
The Welsh pair coupled up on day five and stayed together all the way until the very end with only a few minor bumps in the road. The biggest test they faced came in Casa Amor (of course) when Ellie Jackson, who had a little bit of history with Ciaran entered the villa as a bombshell.
Despite having previously swapped a few DMs with Ellie, Ciaran stayed loyal to Nicole but things kicked off when Nicole returned to the main villa and Ellie suggested that Ciaran had downplayed their messages and revealed that they’d met on a night out – which Nicole didn’t know. Awks…
Ciaran and Nicole did manage to get things back on track – after she shed a few tears – after he insisted that his previous interactions with Ellie didn’t mean anything and the rest, as they say, is history.
But when the runners-up visited us at heat Towers recently, we had to get to the bottom of Ciaran’s night out with Ellie.
“So, apparently, I don’t remember, but on a night out, I did meet Ellie,” he explained as Nicole giggled in the background.
“That was, sort of, reminded me when Ellie told me, but it was just a brief, ‘oh, hiya’ and then kept walking.”
So, there we have it, Nicole never had anything to worry about. As if we ever had any doubts.
Ciaran and Ellie weren’t the only 2024 Islanders to know each other before the villa. Of course, we all know about Joey Essex’s past with Grace Jackson and that Matilda Draper dated one of Ronnie Vint’s friends, but there were also two Casa Amor bombshells who were acquainted prior entering the second villa.
"I think Diamanté [Laiva] and Blade [Siddiqi] because when Blade was announced in the villa in the game, Diamanté said to all us boys, 'You should all be scared because if it's the Blade I know he's going to get all your girls,’” Ciaran let slip.
"I asked Blade if he knew Diamanté and he just sort of nodded at me, so yeah, that's another one."
WATCH Love Island's Ciaran and Nicole break their silence on moving in together
Nathan Katnoria is heat and Closer online’s senior digital writer. He became obsessed with Love Island when Malin Andersson came back to confront Terry Walsh in series two and hasn’t looked back since. When he’s not interviewing former Islanders, Nathan is scrolling through their Instagram feeds for relationship updates and piping hot tea.