But, against all the odds, Lee has slowly begun to reclaim his life. He will always be blind and deaf, though thanks to his 'bionic ears' — cochlear implants — he can hear a certain amount. Before the implants, his only method of communication was to spell words out with a finger in capital letters on his palm.

This Christmas, Lee has more to celebrate than his wife’s imprisonment — though it would take quite some present to top the gift he received from his younger brother, Michael, in August. On that day, after hundreds of four-hour kidney-dialysis sessions three times a week, Lee successfully underwent a kidney transplant — courtesy of Michael.

As Lee told Anna Gizowska of The Times, another positive development is that his 10-year-old son Jack is living with him again. Father and son had been separated when Kate took Jack away from his family and home in Stoke-on-Trent to live with her 60 miles away. Today Jack refuses to see his mother, though she regularly appeals to the courts for access. Each appeal, though denied, costs Lee more than £600. So far, his family has spent over £17,000 in legal and hospital costs. It is money they can ill afford. This hard-working family man, who once brought home a £36,000 salary, is unable to work and now has to live with his parents.

The article said, 'Nobody in the family, least of all Lee himself, had suspected that Kate, over the course of their seven-year marriage, had forged his signature in order to take out loans against their home. She had set up a porn site, posed naked on the internet and was regularly hiring hotel rooms to have sex with strangers. Stafford crown court heard how she had deliberately set out to murder her husband in order to claim his £140,000 life insurance to cover her huge debts.'

Despite everything, Lee remains optimistic: “I keep strong for my son and for my family. Kate may have damaged us but she’ll never break us.”

Perhaps his main reason to be cheerful this Christmas is that he has fallen in love again. Since Easter, he and Jackie — the dialysis nurse who started chatting to him in hospital using the hand signs Annette had taught her — have been inseparable. Annette herself has only admiration for the way her son has coped. “But that’s our Lee,” she says. “He’s one hell of a man.”