The jury in the Tracy Kearns murder trial has heard that there were eight police interviews with defendant Anthony Bird.

They were read out in court by junior prosecuting barrister Anna Price and DC Phillip Robert Williams.

In his first interviews, Bird maintained his account that he had found out about her affair the previous weekend, when she had been to Blackpool with Andrew Jones.

She left in the early hours of the Monday morning.

He said that the children were asking for her.

Bird told police that he had suggested that she should not move out but stay in the same house for the sake of their two daughters – but it was “a categoric no” from her.

The defendant said he suggested that they split the bills 50 – 50 and it would be less disruption for the girls. 

She could have gone off and do “what she wanted to do”.

It would not have been ideal but it was something he would have accepted.

He said that he and his partner had not had sex for three years.

Bird said that he had been “crying day in, day out” and he thought their relationship was salvageable.

A holiday had been planned on May 24 to Paris and it was his intention to propose to her on the Eiffel Tower.

He had bought her a ring at Christmas.  His divorce had come through and he hoped it would put the relationship back on track.

Bird said he had told her that he was going to get down on one knee at the top of the tower.

When he confronted her over the affair she was like “a rabbit in the car headlights” because he had caught her.

He suggested that they talk when she returned home from work on the Sunday evening and when she left she said “this is pointless, I am tired, I need to go” and that she would just “go to a mate’s”.

She said that she knew someone with a caravan and would be back for the girls.

Tracy had walked off because she had a flat tyre, he got it repaired and sent her a text to say so, but she had not replied, he said.

He said he was not surprised that she had not answered phone calls when a number of people were trying to get hold of her because she did not have her SIM card.

Asked if alarm bells had started ringing that she had stayed away, he suggested that she did it for him to do everything and to give him a taste of looking after two little kids on his own.

“I thought she had just gone away for a few days to think how she was going to get out of this mess.”

He was aware her mother was so concerned that she reported her disappearance to the police and had agreed that she should do it.

Bird said he knew the police would come around, a friend took the girls to her home, and he and an officer spoke through it and there was a search of the property.

Asked about injuries to his hand, some cuts and marks, he said they happened when he dug a hole the previous week. His skin would split because working behind the bar he washed his hands so much.

On the Thursday, he was arrested at Sandy Cove where he was sorting the cellar out.

In his interview, he said that he first met Tracy when she interviewed him for a job at Asda.

They had the same interests.

But over the last three or four years things had “slowly, slowly gone downhill” .

He said that she had changed after the birth of one of the children.

“Every day seems to be a little step apart,” he said.

He had always trusted her but he was a bit upset at the club that she was a touchy person and would give people kisses – but he would not get anything. “There was nowt at the club for me,” he said.

Deep down he was bothered about it but he “just put it down to the nature of Tracy.”

He said that on the Monday he had been to the tip with his trailer and believed it was at his house or someone had borrowed it, or maybe it was at the club.

He could not remember.

Bird said he had not disposed of it and had no reason to get rid of his trailer.

Anthony James Bird, 48, denies the murder of Tracy Kearns, 43, at the home they shared in Cader Avenue in Kinmel Bay, between May 7 and May 11 but accepts that he was responsible for her death.

Proceeding.