Page 125 of Swim To Me

“Is it bad?” I ask him, needing to the know the answer immediately. “Did they write anything bad?”

“They—”

“This is everything Delilah didn’t want, everything she feared when we got back together. She worried they’d tear her apart and I’d let them and—”

“Grey, you need to calm down. Ring Delilah. Talk to her. Then you need to get in touch with the press and release a statement.”

“Okay, okay, I can do that. Talk to you later.”

Blake mutters a goodbye, but I’m hardly listening. Instead, running through the front door of the first corner shop I come across, special offers plastered all over its front window. I ignore those in favour of the newspaper stand, plucking the first one from the top when I see a grainy photograph of Delilah and I printed across the left-hand side of the front cover.

“Just this please, mate.”

I pay for the paper with an unsteady tap of my phone, snatching it up and running back to Delilah’s apartment so I can read exactly what has been printed.

I’m hitting Delilah’s contact name with the pad of my thumb while I stand in her kitchen, flicking to the correct page in the newspaper, ink staining my fingertips.

The line rings and rings and rings, continuously.

But she doesn’t answer.

I type out a message with shaky hands.

Me: Please call me back when you get this x

And then I bury myself into the article written about the two of us.

‘British Swimming Athlete Grey Millen, 29, has been spotted a numerous number of times this year with a mysterious brunette, here, pictured above. Now finally, after weeks of digging, we can put a name to the woman in the question. Delilah Clark, 24, is a book editor at one of Notting Hill’s most prestigious editing houses. Not exactly the kind of place we would expect the ex-athlete to be swimming around, but they do say opposites attract, so who are we to judge?

So, how did these two lovebirds meet?

Photo One, see below, was captured all the way back in the beginning of summer, by an innocent bystander. Here, in the background, you can Clark and Millen getting rather cosy beneath the low lighting of Soho’s most popular, and upcoming, 1920’s inspired speakeasy bar.

After that night, in which we can only speculate on the events which took place after this photograph was uploaded to a popular social media sight we cannot name for legal reasons, these two lovebirds seem unable to stay away from each other… and keep their hands to themselves.

Photos Two through Four reveal Clark and Millen galivanting around the historical Victoria and Albert Museum, also most commonly known as the V and A to most Londoners.

Public displays of affections were very much on the cards for these two, before the trail, curiously, went cold.

Perhaps it has something to do with Photo Five, in which Grey Millen is snuggled up beside another young woman, who looks nothing like Delilah Clark. He is seen here, smiling at the camera, looking extremely comfortable even by our standards. Did this unnamed young woman have something to do with sudden disappearance of Miss Clark? Was Mr Millen dating both women at once? Playing them off each other?

Either way, Millen seems to have made his choice, see photo six through nine, in which Clark pops up again, this time in a corner pub on Silchester Road, West London.

A serious conversation looks like it took place, perhaps Delilah Clark was annoyed at Grey for the love triangle she suddenly found herself in, but either way, it’s obvious to see these two make up with even more PDA on the cards.

Our most recent photographs, see photos ten, eleven and twelve, were snapped only last night at what appears to be a publishing event. In the depths of a very swanky looking party,Clark and Millen were photographed cuddling on the stairs, holding hands, dancing, drinking, laughing and, see photo thirteen, kissing.

All of this evidence, and yet, we still hardly knew a thing about the woman, Miss Delilah Clark, who took to the stage last night to commend her publishing team for all of its hard work in the most recent months.

We knew she was a hard-working woman, that is obvious to see from last night’s function, and maybe that is what drew Millen to the brunette in the first place.

But what happens if it was something else? Something a little more… interesting.

Inside sources reveal this isn’t Clark’s first relationship with somebody in the public eye.

Back in her youth, Clark dated fellow classmate, Daniel Morrow.

Morrow rose to fame when he was just a teenager, quickly showing signs of being an athlete on and off the rugby pitch. Clark, who was his girlfriend at the time, was named a few times in his public statements, but things between the two of them quickly turned sour when Morrow was spotted with a number of women on his lap at a nightclub.