Rugby player Danny Cipriani has shared a WhatsApp conversation with his ex Caroline Flack as he said he was "grieving" over her death and giving up social media for Lent.
The Gloucester fly-half shared an Instagram post with his followers, featuring a screengrab of the messages alongside a long post explaining his devastation over Flack's death.
He wrote in the post: "This is my grieving process. Which is talking. A lot. And I'm grieving hard."
He added: "I’m not sure I’d be strong enough if I didn’t understand or see myself in her. Pain is pain.
"No one's pain is worse or less. Because it is individual to them and how they take it."
Flack was found dead at her flat in north London on Saturday, February 15. An inquest has heard that the Love Island's host's provisional course of death was hanging.
Cipriani added: "She was kind beyond belief. And she would think I am crazy doing all this. But I know she would be proud. I’m taking lent off social media.
"In a month I will be back on social because that’s 2020 and this is me navigating my way through life."
At the time of her death, Flack was awaiting trial for allegedly assaulting her boyfriend Lewis Burton. Part of Flack's bail conditions stated that she could not contact Mr Burton.
In the screengrab of the messages they had excanged, Flack asks Cipriani "how you?" before he responds: "You look gorgeous in your pic."
He then adds: "I'm well. Navigating my way though an industry which has never suited me. But... I'm still being great."
He then asks: "Why you just ok? Want you smiling."
She responds: "Well got court case coming up."
He adds in the post: "She wasn’t allowed to talk to her BF throughout the case because of the law. He wanted the charges dropped. They wanted to pursue.
"I am not pointing fingers. The CPS and police do a good job. Just saying we can’t always do a good job."
The rugby player also revealed that Flack called him "black dot" after he changed his display picture on WhatsApp to be all black.
He said he changed his image because he did not trust some people who he had added as his contacts.
But he only recently found out the reason for the pet name.
He writes in the post: "I didn’t really know what she meant when she called me black dot.
"Until her best friend told me on Sunday last week. ‘She used to call you black dot, now i know, your WhatsApp pic is a black dot’ - so I changed my WhatsApp pic to a black dot about 5 months ago because I felt there were people who had my number who I couldn’t trust.
"Ultimately I would have let them into my life. So ultimately I would have to ask myself why."
He added: "This story is about the beauty she found in a situation I found uncomfortable. ‘I’m just talking to black dot’ she would say."
