The parents of missing mum Nicola Bulley have begged police to consider “is there any chance of her being taken?”.
The 45-year-old mum-of-two has been missing from her home in Inskip, Lancs, since Friday morning when she was last seen walking her dog.
Nicola, a mortgage advisor, did the school run and left her car parked up in St Michaels village before walking on a footpath along the River Wyre at around 9.15am.
Speaking to the Mirror today, parents Ernest, 73, and Dot, 72, vowed they “will never stop looking” until they find her.
The alarm was raised at 10.30am on Friday when a friend found Nicola’s springer spaniel, Willow, running loose by the river banks and her phone connected to a work meeting call on a bench.
Ernest joined the search for some five hours on Friday while Nicola’s younger sister Louise has been out everyday.
Speaking about the river route where Nicola was last seen, Ernest said: “There was no sign of a slip or falling in so our thought was ‘has somebody got her?'
“I asked the Sergeant from Fleetwood a few days ago, ‘is there any chance of her being taken’ and she said ‘I don’t think that’s the case’.
“I said ‘how can you know that?’, it’s such an isolated area, the only way that has happened is if it was someone who knew her.
“I think the police thought initially when they saw the phone on the bench and the dog wasn’t tethered that she may have gone into the river and that was their main line of search.”
He added: “I think if she had been in the river they would have found her by now, she’s only a slight thing.”
Lancashire Police are keeping an ‘open mind’ to all scenarios but said they do not believe Nicola has been attacked.
At home, Nicola’s parents have been lending their support to Paul Ansell, her long term partner in the wake of the horror incident.
Each day the family gets up and endures “another day of hope” as Ernest told they stay by Paul’s side to ensure he isn’t alone for phone calls and updates from police.
They described their heartbreak at hearing Nicola’s girls Harriet, nine, Sophia, six “sobbing their hearts out” when their dad told them “mummy is lost”.
Ernest broke down as he said: “When I look at the kids I have to go out of the room because I can’t hold it together. “They are asking where mummy is and ‘when is mummy coming home’, it’s so hard, I just don’t know what’s happened.
He added: “We don’t know how long we can keep going before they realise, they think mummy is coming home soon, but if this keeps going on and on I don’t know where we are going to go or what to say to them.”
Police were still using underwater camera equipment in the stretch of river close to where Nicola was last seen today.
Speaking about the search Dot said: “Our worst time is when it gets dark.
“We find it really hard to think about wondering ‘is she ok’ and ‘where is she?’
“But [the police] tell us 24 hours a day they are on it and still working.
“You wake in the night and you can’t get back off to sleep.”
Volunteers have been taking part in independent searches walking a long stretch of the river out to the coast.
But as yet, the efforts of the police, rescue teams and local people have been unable to turn up any answers.
Ernest continued: “There’s so much coverage, it’s like a man hunt and at this moment in time we’re still no further down the line there’s still no clues.
“If we found a part of clothing, a scarf, anything that was found somewhere then there would be a different line of enquiry but there isn’t. We have found nothing.
“We just dread to think we will never see her again, if the worst came to the worst and she was never found, how will we deal with that for the rest of our lives.”
