ANNE Darwin, former wife of Seaton Carew ‘canoe man’ John, her book about how she covered up her husband’s fake death insurance scam. Chris Webber was intrigued.

"HOW could she do that to her boys? Just how?"

That's the question every last person asked when they spotted Anne Darwin's book in my hand. How could this woman have stood with her two, grieving sons, even as they stood on Seaton Carew pier offering wreathes to the sea in memory of their missing-believed-dead father, John?

The young men, Mark and Anthony, believed their dad had died in a kayaking accident one terrible night in 2002. No doubt they were relieved their mother was receiving about £250,000 in life insurance and pension money.

Even as her boys remembered their 'dead' father, one year on at that beach memorial, Anne Darwin said nothing. It's possible John was even watching from a secret room in their seafront house.

You can be assured that question, 'how could I do it?' is one that Anne Darwin herself has been asked many times. She’s asked it of herself even more and it is the recurring theme of the book.

But it’s asked, most powerfully, not by Darwin’s sons, but by Anthony's wife, Louise. It was two years after Anne Darwin was jailed at Teesside Crown Court for six years and six months for her part in the fraud. Anthony, forced to testify against his own parents, had not made contact or seen her since. Darwin, often very low, had been incarcerated at Long Newton, the tough prison near Durham

Then came a breakthrough: Anthony and Louise, had agreed to see her in the prison. It is impossible not to relate to Anne's hope and excitement. “It was a very emotional visit,” says Darwin in the book.

“They were both clearly still very angry and wanted to know we had caused so much pain. All I could do was to say how sorry I was, I didn’t have a suitable explanation.

“It was then I learned that they’d had a baby, my first grandchild. I will never forget the question asked by Louise: ‘How could you do this to your sons? As a mother, surely, you want to do everything you can to protect your children? I was so overcome with shame and emotion, I couldn’t speak…”

So, out of her pain came the joy of learning she was a grandmother and she began a long, hard journey to reconciliation with her children. Still, she offered Louise and Anthony no explanation, no actual reason for the fraud.

In fact hers was a lie that lasted until Anne, desperately pinning her hopes on an arcane ‘marital coercion’ not guilty defence, was exposed at Teesside Crown Court. Until that moment, actually at court, her sons believed their mother innocent. It was another cruel, crushing blow to Mark and his (less forgiving) brother, Anthony.

So, what is the answer to Anne's own question: how could you do it?

There's no big revelation, no big scene. Instead she (or at least her co-author, journalist David Leigh) allows the reader to come to an explanation more slowly. The answer lies in what was her devotion to her charismatic, sometimes lawless, husband John. The book starts with Anne as an innocent 1950s teenager, Miss Blackhall Colliery no less, growing up in Horden and Blackhall in County Durham in a very respectable, decent family.

Anne describes being in awe of the confident, John, who was two years older. He kept asking her out when she was about 16 and she kept saying, 'no' because, “I didn’t feel good enough.”

Eventually she started going out with the much better educated John, then a teacher at Consett, who swept her off her feet. He was full of schemes (and capable of having affairs) and, obviously besotted, Anne forgave him all eventually going along with the ill-thought out property development schemes that got her family into such terrible financial trouble.

“Why did I do it?,” she says, remembering her fateful call to emergency services reporting her husband missing, “It is the question I still ask myself today. I was never motivated by money, that wasn’t the reason. John’s voice was ringing in my ears. ‘Just make the call, make it sound convincing, it’ll be all right.’ Incredible as it may sound, the only reason I had was my loyalty to John.”

The last word should surely go to one of those wronged sons. “The pain and suffering this caused me and my brother is indescribable,” said Mark in a rare media interview.

Anne, who has done her time fair and square and now works for charity while admirably striving for redemption, must live with that.

  • Anne Darwin’s fee for the book, Out Of My Depth published by Mirrorbooks, will go to the RSPCA and the RNLI.