Melanie Brown has broken her silence about her relationship with Eddie Murphy - the father of her three-month-old daughter, Angel. The pair first met last May after hitting it off at a group dinner and romance quickly blossomed, but the Spice Girl has not heard from the funnyman since giving birth to their child. The rapid deterioration of their partnership certainly came as a surprise to Mel - who only discovered Eddie had broken up with her when he appeared on a Dutch TV show and claimed he wouldn't know who the father of her baby was until the child had a blood test.

"I laughed, because that wasn't the guy that I knew who told me he wanted to have a baby and get married," she reveals in an exclusive interview with Essence.com. "I just didn't believe it. When I saw it, my heart just dropped down to my gut."

According to Mel, they had planned "to get married at Christmas - but we had to change it once I got pregnant, and we decided after the baby was born we'd get married."

They were apparently going to buy a house in Malibu together, although they'd disagreed over their differing lifestyles - something the singer had planned to iron out with Eddie but never had the chance to do after he started dating Tracey Edmonds. "When I left for London I thought I would return and we'd finish our discussion. Instead, I returned to: 'It's over and I'm with somebody else.' For me that was confusing. I still haven't received closure."

The singer, who has a daughter - Phoenix Chi - from a previous marriage, has now contracted top attorney Gloria Allred to ensure Eddie plays a role in Angel's life. "My only concern is that Eddie has to be responsible," she emphasises. "It takes two to make a baby and two to raise it." She says she doesn't want anything for herself from her former flame, though, and will "only have good things to say about him" to their little girl. And if she ran into him? "I'd say, 'Here, meet your baby. She's beautiful. We did a good job.'"

While Eddie has moved on in his love life so too has Melanie, who's now dating film producer Stephen Belafonte, a man she's known for seven years. Stephen, whom she describes as a "very caring and considerate person", has met her mum and kids but Mel says that for now the pair have no plans to wed.

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