MISSING Since she was “in excellent spirits” when they spoke the day before she went, Nicola Bulley’s parents worry that she has been “had.”
Around 9.15 a.m. on Friday, the 45-year-old was last seen in St. Michael’s in Wyre, Lancashire.
Her cell phone was discovered nearby while still in a conference call for work, so there is still some mystery surrounding her absence.
With no sign of the missing mother, Nicola’s springer spaniel Willow was also found.
Now that they have voiced their concerns, Nicola’s parents Ernest, 73, and Dot, 72, stress that her disappearance is completely out of character.
As the hunt approached its fifth day, they also told the Mirror, “we will never stop looking for her.”
Recalling the last conversation with his daughter, Ernest said: “Her mind was great, we picked the children up the Thursday before she went missing, as we do every Thursday.
“We took them home, Nicola had had a meeting with her boss in Garstang and she said can you stay a bit later because I have an important client coming in on Zoom. We said ‘no problem’ and stayed.
“She had done her work and she was very upbeat about getting her mortgage sorted.
“I said we better go now and Nicola came to the front door, and I gave her a kiss and told her I loved her and that was the last conversation I had with her.”
The case is being handled as a missing person investigation, according to Lancashire Police, although they are maintaining an open mind.
Additionally, according to the police, there is no evidence that the dog walker was attacked.
However, Ernest claimed there is no proof Nicola went into the river while walking her dog Willow, leading him to worry that someone may have “got her.”
He claimed the sergeant responded that police do not believe there is a chance she was “taken” when he questioned whether such a possibility existed.
He said he asked the sergeant if there was a chance she was “taken” but was told police do not think that’s the case.
Ernest said the family “dread to think” they will never see Nicola again as he does not how they would deal with that “for the rest of our lives”.
Speaking about her daughter’s children, 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.”
Dot, Nicola’s mother, also mentioned how difficult the nights are “when it becomes dark” since she constantly worries about how and where her daughter is.
Police located a “possibly significant witness” who may have seen Nicola for the final time as he walked his own dog at around 9.15am.
A timeline of the moments preceding Nicola’s disappearance has also begun to take shape.
After dropping off her two girls, ages six and nine, at school, the mother-of-two left for her morning dog walk.
Exclusively Mortgages, Nicola’s employer, reported that she had joined on to a team meeting at 9:01am but that her camera and microphone were off.
At 9:15 a.m. on January 27, she was last spotted heading east along the River Wyre towpath.
After spotting Willow, her dog’s lead and harness, and Nicola’s phone on a bench headed toward Wyreside Farm Caravan Park, a passerby informed the kids’ school.
Police, firefighters, mountain rescue, underwater teams, and members of the local community all participated in a thorough search to discover the mother of two.
Officers are still searching abandoned house grounds, ditches, water margins, and wooded areas.
The children sobbed when Nicola’s partner Paul Ansell said to them over the weekend, “Mummy’s lost.”
Speaking at the family home in Inskip, Paul said previously: “It is just perpetual hell. Utter disbelief.
“All we can say is we need to find her. She’s got two little girls that need their mummy home.
“We have got to get some good news now.”
Nicola is characterised as being white, 5 feet 3 inches tall, and having shoulder-length light brown hair.
She was last seen with her hair in a ponytail and wearing a long, black gilet jacket with a hood, black pants, and olive-green ankle wellies.
Nicola speaks with an Essex accent and has ties to the Blackpool neighbourhood of Thornton-Cleveleys.
Anyone who has seen her or knows where she could be is requested to phone 101 and reference log 473 from January 27.
The police advised calling 999 to report sightings right away.
