MILLY: THE SISTER'S GRIEF: Milly always said 'Night night, I love

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Sep 22, 2002 | by GERARD COUZENS

"I sent Milly a text message saying she'd better get home. I said that Dad was going to be very cross if she didn't get home soon.

"When he came back in, he said he couldn't find her anywhere. I rang some of her friends but no one had heard anything. That's when I thought she'd been abducted. I just had this really strong feeling that that was what had happened. I was getting very frightened because I was in the house on my own. I thought, 'What if the man who has taken my sister is after me as well? What if he's after our family?'.

"Your mind races into thousands of different options and you think of the worst things.

"When Dad got back I said, 'I think we need to call Mum'. Dad and I called all of Milly's friends while we waited for Mum but no-one had seen her.

"When Mum arrived I said, 'This is getting really serious, we need to call the police'."

The police arrived shortly after 7pm and immediately treated it as a major incident. "That was the worst night," says Gemma. "It was really awful. I remember looking out of the window thinking 'Come on, Milly, come home'.

"My mum kept going out to the front of the house, pacing up and down the street, looking for her at the end of the road. I kept thinking, 'This is a nightmare and I'm going to wake up soon'. But it got worse and worse."

Gemma also reflected on what the discovery of Milly's body would mean to the family.

"The worst bit would be seeing my parents so upset and not being able to do a thing about it," she says. "But at least we would be able to move on. When someone dies, you grieve, but eventually life carries on again.

"When someone's missing you haven't got any of the answers." Even before the body was found, Gemma felt in her heart of hearts that her little sister was probably dead. "After the police found another body in the Thames and they thought it was her, it just clicked for me that I was never going to see my sister alive again."

Nothing has been changed in Milly's room. Gemma pops in and out to borrow things just as she did when her sister was still there.

"We've got the same perfume. Mine ran out the other day so I popped in and thought ''I'm sure Milly wouldn't mind'.

"I know Milly wouldn't want to see us all upset and worrying about her. I just think I'm going to enjoy myself twice as much - for me and Milly. It's like Milly is there as well."

After the initial search, Gemma was questioned by police officers for several hours in a Vulnerable Person Suite in Weybridge, Surrey.

"There was lots of stuff the police wanted to know - what sort of stuff Milly used to tell me.

"They asked about boyfriends and what she did socially. It was hard because she had told me stuff in confidence.

"They asked me things about Mum and Dad. 'Did they ever have an argument with Milly?

"I was in tears over certain questions and got quite annoyed. I said, 'You shouldn't be asking me about my Mum and Dad, it isn't their fault she's gone missing.'

"It felt like they were sucking all the energy out of me. My mum explained that the police might think Dad was a suspect, and my uncles - all the males in our family - would be questioned intensely.