Looking back, it was never going to be a typical love story.

Olivia Nervo and Matthew Pringle’s eyes first met across a throng of partygoers on Necker Island, the palm-fringed Caribbean resort owned by tycoon Richard Branson.

Liv, then 34, was there in a professional capacity; she and her twin sister Miriam had built an international following with their DJ act, Nervo, and they’d been booked to play for the privileged clientele.

When Matthew, a ‘super-sweet and slightly nerdy’ 30-something businessman, approached her that night in November 2016, Liv admits there were no thunderbolts.

There weren’t any warning bells, either – more’s the pity.

While Liv didn’t know it then, she’d just met a man whose family were multi-millionaires. A man who, within weeks, would be ‘love-bombing’ her with extravagant gestures, paying hundreds of thousands on a whim to cross the globe, just so they could hold hands.

A man who said he longed to be the father of her child. A man who said he’d love her for ever – and whom she loved back with all her heart.

A man who, it turned out, was a despicable liar.

Because two years after that meeting in paradise, by which time Liv was six months pregnant, she discovered their love affair was rooted in deceit. That Matthew had been in relationships with two other women at the same time, one of whom was pregnant with his second baby – having already had another child that Liv knew nothing about.

To her horror, Liv found she’d committed herself to a man she hardly knew. One, she feels, who deliberately tricked her into having his child – behaviour that went way beyond that of a cheat, and was actually domestic abuse of an emotional nature.

Liv’s case was cited in a parliamentary debate on ‘reproductive coercion’ – manipulating a person’s choice over a pregnancy as a means to control them – in March, when it was raised by MP Natalie Fleet in the House of Commons. Fleet is campaigning for a change in the law, calling for reproductive coercion to be recognised as a standalone criminal offence – a campaign Liv is supporting.

‘Liv’s story exposes a form of domestic abuse that our legal system in the UK still struggles to recognise,’ Fleet said.

‘Pringle admitted he had deceived Liv because he knew she would leave if he told her the truth and he wanted a baby with her... It demonstrates that he understood knowing the truth would have affected Liv’s decision to have a baby with him. This is reproductive coercion. It is about control over a woman’s body, her choices and her future.’

While reproductive coercion is recognised in England and Wales as a form of controlling or coercive behaviour – which is already a criminal offence under the Serious Crime Act – reproductive coercion itself is not an offence.

Furthermore, in Liv’s case, a High Court judge has said he was unlikely to find Matthew’s behaviour amounted to ‘reproductive coercion’ – despite branding his actions as ‘reprehensible’ and coming under the heading of ‘domestic abuse’.

Of course, this daunting legal quagmire was still a world away when Liv met Matthew under the balmy night sky of Necker Island, nearly ten years ago.

‘He asked if he could get me a drink and said he’d love to take me out,’ she remembers.

A few weeks later, he flew to Tokyo to watch Liv – who co-wrote David Guetta’s hit When Love Takes Over, and has worked alongside Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears – perform.

Details of his wealth – Matthew has been dubbed the ‘honey king’ due to his ownership of businesses including Manuka Doctor honey – ‘came out in layers’. ‘Nothing about him screamed money,’ Liv says. ‘We’d just do normal things, like order pizza in my hotel room after a show.’

Yet by the end of their first year of dating, they’d spent 115 days together in 22 different cities as Liv’s touring career took her away from her home in London, and were constantly on the phone.

She was further endeared to his complicated, vulnerable character. ‘He told me he had fragile mental health, and he didn’t seem to have many friends,’ Liv says. ‘I wanted to be empathetic.’

While Matthew bonded with Liv’s family, arranging a meeting with his mother – businesswoman Lynette Erceg, who for several years ranked as New Zealand’s richest woman – proved impossible. Plans always fell through at the last minute.

Yet soon, the loved-up couple were talking babies. ‘He seemed genuine. I believed he was committed to me and would be a good father,’ Liv says.

‘We were using an app to track fertility; Matthew would fly out to meet me wherever I was at my most fertile.’ In 2018, Matthew excitedly flew out to Ibiza to be with Liv to do a pregnancy test.

‘When it showed positive, he hugged me for a long time. He talked about it being a wake-up call, saying he wanted to be the best partner and father for us.’

They started making plans for a joint family meet-up before Christmas, which, once again, his mother mysteriously couldn’t make. Then Matthew pulled out too, leaving Liv heartbroken.

‘I just spent the whole day crying,’ she recalls.

After a miserable Christmas apart, Matthew met Liv on January 2, 2019, for crisis talks in Melbourne, Australia. ‘He said he knew he’d let me down, but that he really wanted this, and to be given a chance to prove it.’

But as they planned to set up a family home in London, Matthew’s behaviour became even more evasive.

Later that year, Liv’s twin sister Miriam voiced her suspicions that Matthew wasn’t all he seemed. ‘I thought she was crazy,’ says Liv. ‘But our parents were equally worried, so I booked an impromptu trip to New Zealand, almost to prove them wrong.’

Liv, then six months pregnant, flew from London to New Zealand. Matthew checked them into a hotel, saying it was too late to go to his grandfather’s house, where he said he was living at the time.

Liv asked that he hand over his phone, where she saw a number of calls to a woman called Lauren*, whom Matthew claimed was merely a client.

The next morning, Matthew took a deeply suspicious and unsettled Liv to his office. From the balcony, she saw something strange: a woman was circling Matthew’s car, looking through the windows.

‘When she saw me, she looked up and asked, “Who are you?” I said, “I’m Liv, Matt’s girlfriend.”

‘Then she said, “He’s meant to be in hospital having a baby”, so I said, “Well, I’m six months pregnant” and lifted my top up to show my bump. She looked like she was about to cry and then disappeared.’

Panicked and confused, Liv demanded to know what was going on. Coldly and calmly, Matthew revealed the terrible truth.

The woman circling the car was Lauren’s sister, he said. And Lauren was not a client, she was his partner – and mother of his child.

And yes, she was currently in hospital... about to give birth to their second baby.

‘When were you planning on telling me?’ Liv gasped. ‘After you’d had the baby,’ came his reply. He was scared she’d leave him if she knew about his other family, he said.

Liv went into shock. It appeared Lauren had conceived while Liv and Matthew were trying for a baby. They’d been so happy. Was all that fake? And what else was he lying about?

Liv opened his wallet. ‘I took out the photo he had of me, and behind it there was another one – of a woman I’d never seen before.’

It transpired the woman was yet another girlfriend – one who’d ended her relationship with Matthew in 2017, after learning about Liv.

Though so much felt uncertain, Liv was convinced of one thing. She’d been tricked – into a relationship and into a pregnancy that she wasn’t sure she even wanted any more.

‘I was really mentally not very well. I didn’t want to carry on, not just with the pregnancy, but with everything,’ she says.

Devastated, she flew home to her family. ‘They were as shocked as me,’ she says. ‘No one could believe it. My 87-year-old grandmother took it the worst; she’d been really fond of him.’

Over the next few months, Matthew continued to bombard Liv with confused messages.

‘I told him, I’m not responding to you until I get a group meeting... because I can’t trust you,’ recalls Liv. ‘That’s when he launched into lawyer talk, and everything just broke down.’

Liv and Matthew were no longer two people eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child, but strangers communicating through lawyers.

And Liv had no idea that an extreme court battle was to come – nor about the legal and financial clout of her foe.

In 2019, Liv gave birth to a healthy baby girl in London.

As she held her daughter, she wept; tears of happiness that something so precious could come out of such an ugly situation, but also sadness knowing she’d be raising this baby alone.

‘The second she was born, it was like “OK, time to protect, time to rally”. She snapped me out of something. She saved me,’ says Liv. She messaged Matthew to tell him about his daughter, and received a brief and polite acknowledgment. Then, in August 2020, she was shocked to receive a ‘Confidentiality and No Contact’ contract sent by Matthew’s lawyers, which has been seen by this newspaper. It stipulated that Liv ‘shall not make any direct or indirect contact whether oral, written or otherwise with any member of [Matthew Pringle’s] family without [his] prior written consent’.

It also forbade her from saying anything publicly about Matthew – including that they were ever in a relationship.

Liv saw it for what it was: a desperate attempt to protect Matthew’s reputation, and gag Liv from telling the world about his appalling behaviour.

Liv refused to sign it. So, a long-winded, costly – and secret – process of legal correspondences rumbled on until September 2022, when Matthew took Liv to the family court. He applied for child arrangements and parental responsibility and also for an independent social worker to enable him to meet his daughter for the first time.

Their first session took place when she was four years old; it ‘went very well’ according to the Court of Appeal hearing.

Prior to lodging the application with the family court, Matthew had made an offer of a $20million (£14.9million) trust fund for the child. 

Liv believes it was Matthew’s intention to use the Family Courts – which protect children with strict anonymity laws – to ensure details of their relationship were kept private. However, sources close to Matthew say his actions were motivated by his children’s welfare.

Proceedings continued for two years. And yet, two weeks before the final hearing in September 2024, Matthew applied to withdraw his application.

Years of legal wranglings had come to nothing.

In January this year there was a breakthrough, however. There was a hearing in the Court of Appeal, in which the same gagging reporting restrictions didn’t apply, meaning the case could be reported – and Liv could finally speak publicly. At the hearing, Matthew admitted domestic abuse of an emotional nature and deception – though not reproductive coercion.

Liv has been left with legal fees of more than half a million pounds and has been collaborating with The Good Law Project to try to get justice in her case.

‘The moment my daughter was born, I felt a love so powerful and a responsibility to protect her,’ says Liv. ‘But that does not erase the sense of violation I felt at how she was conceived.’

Today, Liv’s daughter is seven. She hasn’t seen her father – who declined to comment when contacted by the Mail – since their last contact session in 2024.

‘Children should not inherit secrecy, silence or exclusion because adults are trying to preserve reputations or avoid uncomfortable truths,’ Liv says. ‘My daughter deserves the same dignity, recognition and sense of belonging as every other child.’

* Lauren’s name has been changed