When most celebrities split from partners, they do all they can to keep it a secret. Even if their news is discovered, most will ignore requests for confirmation in the hope it will never be made public. Others simply deny it while some will insist, through lawyers, that it is a private matter.
So when an alert from Sky News pinged on my phone last August revealing that reality TV couple Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury – parents to a two-year-old daughter, Bambi – had split up, my first thought was: 'Why on earth would they announce it like this?'
'Never in a million years did I think I'd ever have to write this,' Molly-Mae declared in a post on Instagram, which left her eight million followers dumbstruck.
'After five years of being together I never imagined our story would end, especially not this way. I will forever be grateful for the most important thing to me now and always, my beautiful daughter... she will always be my priority.'
In his statement several hours later, Tommy, younger brother of boxing great Tyson Fury, said he was 'heartbroken' and asked fans for privacy. He also thanked Molly-Mae for 'making me a dad', adding that 'Bambi is our priority'.
Despite the pair, both 25, being a product of the heavily-manufactured ITV reality dating show Love Island, having met on the 2019 series, their news became a national talking point. That would not have happened if, after five years as one of Britain's most lucrative celebrity couples, they hadn't announced their decision to go their separate ways.
To add to the conversation, Molly-Mae's clothing range MaeBe was due to go on sale a fortnight later while Tommy's autobiography Lightning Can Strike Twice: My Life as a Fury was due to be published in two months' time.
So why then, when they rekindled their relationship late last year, did they not release a new statement confirming that they were back together again?
Tommy Fury and Molly-Mae Hague met on reality series Love Island in 2019, but split up earlier this year. Here, the former couple are pictured at the Pride of Britain Awards following their stint on the show
Instead, news of their renewed romance only emerged when an associate with them at a New Year party took pictures of the pair kissing on the stroke of midnight.
One source familiar with the couple said: 'If they announced their split, which was presumably sad news for them, to such fanfare why would they not want to share the happy news with their fans?
'Surely you'd think that they would want to tell the world that they are back together and their brand is back intact. It doesn't add up.' Indeed it doesn't.
Four days later Tommy, who is aware of Molly's love for horror films, took her for a secret cinema trip to watch Nosferatu and stayed the night at her house afterwards.
He was then seen leaving the £4million Cheshire mansion, where they had lived together – wearing the same clothes as the day before.
But as yet, despite Molly-Mae releasing three episodes of her new Amazon Prime documentary, Molly-Mae: Behind It All, along with a press conference to promote it – plus Tommy giving a candid interview to Men's Health magazine – they have yet to confirm that they are an item again.
Molly-Mae attends a screening for her Amazon Prime series titled Behind It All - which was released on Friday
Perhaps then, their fans can be forgiven for taking with a pinch of salt Molly-Mae's staunch denials that their split was an attempt at publicising their businesses.
In a carefully-orchestrated junket last Wednesday at The Londoner, a five-star hotel in Leicester Square, where she was flanked by her highly-protective agent Fran Britton, Molly-Mae insisted: 'I actually say in the documentary that I wish it was a publicity stunt because it would have been a lot easier... that, for me, above everything, has been the most frustrating part.
'Going through all of this with the turmoil of a break-up has been incredibly hard. To have those comments – and I see all of them – and people saying, 'This has obviously just been done for the launch of her brand or a publicity stunt', that is very painful to read because it's real life.'
Molly-Mae pressed on: 'Tommy and I have a baby together and it's very, very real. It's a really hard thing that we have both gone through the past six months.
'I think this documentary will clear up any questions of that. I think that people will be quite surprised by how honest we have been.'
Only, they haven't. Either that or Molly-Mae must underestimate her fans' intelligence. Back in October, when the Daily Mail interviewed boxer Tommy as he was promoting his autobiography, he refused to address the split or explain the reasons behind it.
In the three-part series, Molly-Mae says: 'Going through all of this with the turmoil of a break-up has been incredibly hard'
Fast forward three months, on the same day as Molly-Mae's press conference he told Men's Health that they split because of his so-called drinking problem.
'The reason why Molly and me broke up was because I got addicted to alcohol and I couldn't be the partner that I wanted to be any more', he said.
'It kills me to say it, [but] it's true, I couldn't. I loved a pint of beer, loved to drink, and it is what it is. People go through different things in life and we all have our crosses to bear. I've got mine.'
Molly-Mae echoes this in her documentary, saying she was 'angry... very hurt... and traumatised' by him drinking at her sister Zoe's wedding a couple of weeks before their split, when she had expressly asked him not to.
'He's never had an alcohol problem but alcohol caused problems for us,' she says. 'It got to a point where I wasn't looking forward to anything because alcohol affected it so much.'
Issues with alcohol can affect any relationship but it's curious that if this was the underlying problem surrounding the split, rumours about Tommy's fidelity were not immediately quashed.
Indeed, in the documentary Molly-Mae addresses rumours about Tommy cheating on a 'lads' holiday' to Ohrid, North Macedonia – even though the rumours seemed thin to me, not least because no one emerged claiming to have had a fling with him.
The closest thing to a holiday scandal was Tommy's encounter with Milla Corfixen, a blonde Danish woman who chatted to him in a nightclub.
The 20-year-old admitted to seeing Tommy on three separate occasions during the holiday but insisted that nothing more happened between them.
Milla said: 'I am the girl but nothing happened. We just had fun and a chat. We did not do anything.
'I would never have done anything with a married man, as he's basically married, with a little child.'
Did Molly-Mae know this all along? Possibly, which is why she confesses in the documentary: 'I've been holding on to the hope that as soulmates we will always come back together. All I want is to be with him.'
The thing is, she already is – and possibly has been for longer than any of us realise.
