Former News of the World editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson had an affair for at least six years, a jury has heard.
Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC told jurors at the Old Bailey that Brooks declared her love for Coulson in a letter from February 2004, when he tried to end their relationship.
Mr Edis said: “It is clear from that letter that, as of February 2004, they had been having an affair which had lasted at least six years.”
The court heard the pair had been having an affair dating back to around 1998, spanning the period covered by their phone-hacking conspiracy charge.
Brooks, who was latterly News International chief executive, was editor of the News of the World when Coulson was her deputy.
She wrote: “The fact is you are my very best friend, I tell you everything, I confide in you, I seek your advice, I love you, care about you, worry about you, we laugh and cry together.
“In fact, without our relationship in my life I am not sure I will cope.”
Mr Edis told the jury of nine women and three men that he was not revealing the affair to deliberately intrude into the pair’s privacy or to make a “moral judgment”.
“But Mrs Brooks and Mr Coulson are charged with conspiracy and, when people are charged with conspiracy, the first question a jury has to answer is how well did they know each other? How much did they trust each other?” he said. “And the fact that they were in this relationship which was a secret means that they trusted each other quite a lot with at least that secret and that’s why we are telling you about it.”
He said the revelation was likely to attract a “great deal of publicity” and might draw some “unfair, unkind and unnecessary” comment.
Mr Edis said of the letter: “It appears that Mr Coulson was seeking to break off the affair . . . and this is Mrs Brooks’ reaction to him telling her that and it is clearly obvious from the letter that it caused her a great deal of grief.”
Brooks remained with her head bowed and Coulson looked ahead towards the prosecutor as their affair was revealed.
The court heard Brooks went on holiday to Dubai in April 2002, but remained in contact with Coulson while she was away as the newspaper planned to run a front page story about murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Mr Edis said: “That’s why you need to have the full context of their relationship, because while she was away, she was in contact with him, we say. Of course, what I’ve told you may mean that they had all sorts of personal reasons for wanting to remain in contact with each other, but we say to you that it’s clear from the timing of the contact that it was at least partly work-related.”
Brooks, 45, of Churchill, Oxfordshire; Coulson, also 45, of Charing in Kent; ex-head of news Ian Edmondson, 44, from London; and the tabloid’s ex-managing editor Stuart Kuttner, 73, from Woodford Green, Essex, all deny conspiring with others to hack phones between October 3, 2000 and August 9, 2006.
The jury has already been told that private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was paid around £100,000 per year, has admitted phone hacking.
Prosecutors claim that Mulcaire, Brooks, Coulson and Kuttner were involved in a conspiracy to hack Milly’s voicemail.
The prosecutor said the schoolgirl’s family went through an “agony of hope” as they “yearned for their missing daughter” for months until her body was found in 2002.
“The prosecution say that the NotW, through Mr Mulcaire, hacked her phone at that time,” he said.