Thursday 15 December 2011 is a day former News of the World crime editor Lucy Panton says “will permanently be etched in my memory”.

It was the start of an ordeal she is only now beginning to emerge from, more than two months after her conviction for conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office was quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Speaking out for the first time about what it was like to be targeted – wrongly as it later turned out – by the police inquiry into tabloid payments, she recounted the day of her arrest.