On November 1 that year, Lianne received a call on her mobile from Martin, telling her that he had been arrested and was at a police station.
'The shock was immense,' she said. 'The allegations were shocking.
'Never once did I question Martin as to whether any of it was true or not. If I had had only one small doubt, I would have ended our relationship.'
'We started building a new life in Spain,' she said, pointing out that throughout the two and a half years they spent there, she paid taxes and took her daughter, who became a fluent Catalan speaker, to school.
Last year she gave birth to Daniel and, perhaps for a while, really did believe that the new life they had forged in Spain was real and lasting.
But back in the UK, Smith was a wanted man. When he failed to answer bail on January 21, 2008, he was placed on Operation Captura's 'most wanted' list.
Captura is a joint initiative between the Crimestoppers charity, the Serious Organised Crime Agency in the UK, the British Embassy in Madrid and Spanish police.
Their aim is to hunt down suspects of serious crime wanted in the UK who are thought to be living in Spain.
A couple of weeks ago, the Barcelona apartment Lianne shared with Smith and their children was burgled. She reported it to the police.
On May 8, Smith was arrested. She wondered if it was her fault.
'I think they might have put two and two together somehow.'
Over the next ten days, she struggled to keep things together. It was tough enough with two young children, she said, when there were two parents to care for them.
The final blow came when she heard that Smith was being extradited.
'I don't really know how I'll cope,' she said. 'Keeping my family together' was a phrase she used several times.
This is the paradox at the heart of this tragedy - that a woman apparently so devoted to her children could even think of harming them.
During the phone conversation, she spoke of how Becky was everything to her and her partner. She was the focus of their lives.
It is impossible, of course, to know what was going through her mind in the hours leading up to the deaths of her children in room 101 at the Hotel Miramar in Lloret.
According to the respected Spanish newspaper El Pais, she wrote a confession then calmly asked staff at the beachfront hotel to phone for the police and an ambulance at around 3pm on Monday.
When a receptionist asked why, she reportedly replied: 'You will see'.
