ONE of Paula Poolton’s closest pals told a court how she worried her friend would get hurt by her relationship with the man accused of murdering her.

Carol Bertie said she did not approve of Paula’s affair with Royal Mail worker Roger Kearney.

Mrs Bertie told Winchester Crown Court it was her understanding that the pair only usually met up in the afternoons and frequently exchanged texts.

When her texts were not returned Mrs Bertie said Paula would get annoyed and continue texting until he replied.

Her friend said although Paula hoped that they had a future together she did not think it would last.

“He seemed too reluctant to reciprocate her feelings. I did feel she was going to get hurt,”

she told jurors.

Mrs Bertie, who had known Paula for about 15 years and described her as happy-golucky and “a very nice person to know”, said the last time she saw Paula was on the afternoon of October 17 when she told her of her plan to move in with Kearney.

She said: “I thought she was making a mistake. I hadn’t met him. She hardly knew him. The relationship seemed a bit one sided. She was already married and Rick knew nothing about it.”

Paula also told Mrs Bertie that she had told her husband that she was out with her that evening, when in fact she was meeting up with Kearney.

Mrs Bertie said: “I was annoyed because I didn’t want to get involved.”

Under cross-examination Mrs Bertie also described Paula’s relationship with her builder husband Ricky as “volatile”.

She recounted an occasion in which Paula had rung her and said that her husband had strangled her and that there had been “blood everywhere”

but when she saw her she admitted the attack had not been that violent.

She also said that she had received a call from Ricky Poolton on October 23 while Paula was still presumed missing in which he told her: “You realise that you and me are the prime suspects.” Mrs Bertie said it sounded as though he had been drinking.

Paula, 40, went missing on October 17. It is the prosecution’s case that Kearney then murdered her and left her body in the boot of her car where it was found eleven days later.

Kearney, 57, of Painswick Close, Sarisbury Green, denies murder.