THE man accused of murdering shopworker Jenny Nicholl confessed to his wife that he loved the 19-year-old, a court heard yesterday.

Alison Hodgson said her husband, David, admitted several weeks after the teenager went missing that the pair had been having an affair.

Mrs Hodgson, who smiled and waved at her husband of 25 years as she walked into court yesterday, said she had suspected the pair had been having a relationship for several years.

She said: "He admitted afterwards (when Jenny went missing) that he had a sexual relationship with her.

"I just wanted him to tell me the truth. He said he had sex with her five times on five separate occasions.

"He said it had been in the last year or two before she went missing. He said he loved her."

Mrs Hodgson said Jenny would flirt with her husband when she came to visit her daughter, Rebecca, who went to school with the missing teenager.

She said: "Before she blighted our lives, I thought our marriage was fine. But when she got involved, it ground to a halt.

"We tolerated one another. We came and went as separate people, but we lived in the same house."

She told the jury at Teesside Crown Court that her husband never gave any indication he had harmed Jenny.

She said he always referred to her in the present tense - never the past tense.

On the day Jenny went missing, in June 2005, Mrs Hodgson said her husband went out in the afternoon, stayed out all night and came back the next morning.

He told her he had been camping, the court heard.

Mrs Hodgson said that, on his return, he put his clothes in the wash basket and had a shower.

She said her family found out Jenny was missing several days later when her husband's brother, Robert, told them he had helped police look for the teenager in the countryside around Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Mrs Hodgson, 41, said: "David seemed genuinely shocked that Jenny had gone missing."

The court heard that he later told his wife not to mention Jenny to the police.

Mrs Hodgson said this was because he knew she would not say anything complimentary about the teenager.

In a further twist, she said her husband told her he knew Jenny was going to leave because she was frightened of her father.

He told his wife he had given Jenny about £2,000 - raised from selling items at car boot sales - before she left, the court was told.

She said: "I think he said she was going to London or Glasgow."

The court then heard how Mr Hodgson told his wife he and Jenny had exchanged notes in the weeks after she went missing.

The messages were left at a secret place in Green Lane, a country road about two miles outside Richmond, it was alleged.

Mr Hodgson told his wife the notes were not written in Jenny's handwriting and that a third party had been acting as a go- between, the jury heard.

Mrs Hodgson said: "He said one of the notes said she was happy, glad she had left Richmond, and was well.

"I told him to take them to the police. He said they had been destroyed."

She told how she and her husband had been woken in the night after Robert Hodgson had attempted suicide by cutting his wrists.

The incident happened a week after Jenny was last seen by her family, the court heard. He went on to make a full recovery.

Mrs Hodgson said her brother-in-law had attempted suicide before.

She later told the court how her husband then attempted suicide about three weeks later.

She said: "He said he was going camping. He said he would see me tomorrow.

"I thought nothing of it until I got a knock on the door that night, and two policemen said 'Are you aware that your husband is missing?'

"They said they suspected he had attempted suicide.

"He said it was because he had hurt me so much."

The court heard how the defendant would regularly go camping on the moors and in woods around Richmond.

Mrs Hodgson said she knew her husband would spend the night in a wooden hut in Sandbeck Plantation.

She told the court she jokingly referred to the hut as the "love shack" because she suspected Jenny and her husband met there.

The court later heard from 24-year-old Frances Hodgson, the defendant's eldest daughter.

She told the court she got on well with her father, but "could not stand" Jenny.

She said her father's brother, Robert, had seen Jenny in Richmond Market Place two days after it is alleged she was murdered.

David Hodgson, 47, of Olav Road, Richmond, denies killing Jenny on June 30, 2005.

The trial continues.