Page 126 of Swim To Me

None of which were Clark.

Things only seemed to go from bad to worse when photos of Clark emerged, looking haggard, face puffy and eyes red, perhaps from crying over her broken heart as she appeared angry at the reporters following her.

Morrow and Clark split only a couple of years ago, with Morrow going on to become one of England’s best rugby players and is now currently engaged to a Swedish supermodel. An upgrade, perhaps?

Clark seemed to disappear from the books, dipping out of Morrow’s life and social media accounts. Only to pop back upnow with Grey Millen, ex-swimmer extraordinaire, who was well on his way to the Olympics before a disastrous collision with a faulty ski lift in France set him, and his career, floating off course.

We reached out to Daniel Morrow and his management for a statement, but he declined.

So, did Millen know about Clark’s famous ex-lover?

Or is she in it for the fame? With now not one, but two, famous athletes under her belt.

Only time will tell.’

I’m fucking frothing at the mouth by the time I get to the end of the article, my hand digging into the paper until it crinkles beneath the pressure.

I want to rip the fucking thing up. Burn it.

But that won’t help my situation. It won’t even make me feel better, because me ripping one copy up won’t get rid of all the hundreds of thousands of other copies around the UK.

People will have read this over their morning coffee today, they’ll have read it on their phone while flicking between social media sights, still lying in bed, deathly hungover from the night before.

People will have read this and believe every single piece of junk evidence inside it.

They’ll be tearing Delilah apart, not me, because I was hardly tarred with a brush at all within the article. No, they targeted Delilah, over and over and over again. For no fucking reason, other than they thought she’d be an easy target and she’s already got a famous ex.

“So, fucking what?” I think to myself.

What on earth that has that got to do withourrelationship?

How on earth have the press managed to snap all of these pictures of us, and make up a story, using only the tiniest bit of truth to back up their statements. The rest of it is pure bullshit.

“Fuck!”

And that photo. Photo what-ever-the-fuck number. I told her, Itoldthatfan, I didn’t want the photo published anywhere because look what happens. Look what it does to my personal life.

A hot prick of tears burst behind my eyes; a mixture of sheer hurt and anger all rolled into one fucked up ball.

This is wrong. All of it. And I’m not just going to stand by and let it unfold.

I’m not going to let Delilah’s worst fears spiral any further. I can’t go back in time and make the journalist not hit publish on the article, I can’t make them unsnap the picture evidence of our relationship.

But I can vehemently disagree with everything printed about us.

Keying in the code to my phone, I double check to see if Delilah has returned my text message, my heart sinking when I see she hasn’t even looked at it.

Even though it kills me to think it, I’ll have to deal with that later. For now, I pull up my old managers contact number, listening to the monotone dial tone before he picks up.

“Grey. I thought I’d be hearing from you sometime today.”

Chapter 32

Grey

“I’m sorry to bother you on a Saturday,” I say, allowing myself to drop onto Delilah’s couch. The throw beside my head smells like her.

“Can’t be helped, son,” Stu replies. “The press doesn’t run on our schedule.”

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