Rielle Hunter breaks her silence on Edwards affair

Rielle Hunter, mistress of the disgraced Democrat former presidential hopeful John Edwards, has finally spoken about their affair, saying she is not "a home wrecker". In an interview with GQ magazine, she said the two are still in love and Edwards wants to be a full-time father to their daughter, Quinn.

It was the revelation that Edwards had fathered a daughter with Hunter in the summer of 2007 while supposedly helping his wife Elizabeth through her inoperable cancer – which had returned in March that year – that triggered his downfall. Confronted by scandal sheet the National Enquirer, the then Democrat senator at first denied everything, then confessed the affair but denied the lovechild. It was only in January this year that he finally admitted he was Quinn's father.

Hunter was hired as the Edwards campaign 'videographer' in 2006 – and in her GQ interview she implies an affair began quickly, saying Edwards spoke of falling in love with her on the first day they met. Pictured bare-legged on a bed wearing pearls and a man's shirt, the 45-year-old said the affair ended in 2008, but added: "I know he loves me. I have never had any doubt at all about that.

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"We love each other very much. And that hasn't changed, and I believe that will be till death do us part."

She told the magazine that Edwards is a conscientious father who would like to be a full-time parent to two-year-old Quinn and that their relationship is now something "different". Among other details of the affair, Hunter claimed that Edwards had wanted to quit the race for the White House when his wife's cancer came back, but that it was Elizabeth who had persuaded him to continue. Hunter denied that the affair ended the marriage, saying it was already in dire straits.

The 45-year-old filmmaker, who also posed for the magazine with her daughter in her arms, has been questioned recently by a grand jury investigating the large sums of money that changed hands between the Edwards campaign and Hunter's production company while the affair was being kept secret.

Hunter, who as the former girlfriend of 'Brat Pack' author Jay McInerney inspired the morally ambiguous lead character in his novel Story of My Life, is a keen astrologist, but it seems it is Edwards who has shown the greatest gift for prophesy. Hunter claimed he told her on their first night together: "Falling in love with you could really fuck up my plans for becoming president."