Nights are the worst .. my imagination runs wild as I wonder what's

THE letter was moving and written from the heart. The language in it was simple and none the worse for that.

It came from the elder sister of the missing schoolgirl Amanda Dowler - the first time she has been able to put into words the anguish she is suffering and how big a gap there is in her life.

You could feel the pain as 16-year-old Gemma spoke directly to the person who may have abducted her: "Please return her safely," she said. "I am missing her very much."

Amanda, 13, who is known by friends and family as Milly, vanished nine days ago as she walked to her home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, from the nearby railway station.

Before yesterday, Gemma has been too distraught to talk publicly about her feelings. You could sense the toll every word she put down on paper had taken out of her.

"The nights are the worst," Gemma wrote. Sleep, you guessed, was not easy to come by for her, plagued by nightmares and bad dreams, always picturing the most awful of outcomes.

"My imagination runs wild thinking about what has happened to her. Every day I wake up with the hope that Milly will return. My life has been turned upside down."

Such sadness...and all inside a letter written on ordinary writing paper in a girl's tiny hand, decorated with hearts, stars and kisses, with "I Love U Milly" drawn inside a big heart at the bottom.

Once again Gemma appealed directly to her abductor. "If someone has taken Milly, please return her safely to us as I am missing her very much and I couldn't wish for a lovelier sister.""

Just how much has changed for Gemma and her family since the afternoon when Milly disappeared was spelled out graphically in her letter. Yesterday, on a beautiful early spring day, all there was for them was darkness. How different it had been such a short time ago, when they were all together and the world was full of fun and possibilities. They had so much to occupy them.

Gemma told how Milly had been planning to help her get ready for a prom at Heathside School, Weybridge, where they are both pupils. Milly was going to share her excitement by going around the shops with her and flicking through the dress rails.

She wrote: "One week ago I was looking forward to the Easter holidays. Milly was going to come shopping with me to choose my prom dress and we had planned a great big Easter party."

The girls' mother, Sally, 43, who teaches maths at Heathside, explained how important the prom was for both of them. She said: "Gemma has her GCSEs coming up and the end of school prom. It was a really big deal and Milly was going to come out with Gemma and myself to choose a beautiful dress for it."

The thought of such happiness thwarted - the what-might-have- beens - was almost too much for Sally. Her husband Robert, 50, put his arm around his wife to comfort her as he described the close bond between his two daughters. Mr Dowler, an IT consultant, said: "They shared a bedroom. They've got their own bedrooms, but they shared one together through choice."

Mr and Mrs Dowler said they had bought tickets for a family outing to see a musical in London. "We were going to see My Fair Lady on Monday. She had asked to do that," Mrs Dowler said. Now instead of a West End theatre, there was just the bleak and bare interview room as they spoke at Staines police station.

Last night police revealed that they believe Milly may have gone off with someone she knew rather than being abducted.

This latest twist came as Milly's parents told of their disappointment when the first promising lead in the investigation proved to be false.

A resident in Walton-on-Thames called the BBC's Crimewatch programme after finding what she thought might be Amanda's purse.

Mrs Dowler said: "In one sense you hope it will be because it may give you some clues as to what happened, but it definitely wasn't."

The couple thanked Pop Idol Will Young - who made an appeal for Milly's safe return. Mr Dowler said: "I'm grateful he took the time out to do that."

As for the intense police search of their pounds 500,000 home ended yesterday, Mr and Mrs Dowler said they had not felt comfortable with it but said they gave their full consent.

"They were looking for any clues, any notes that she might have left that might lead to someone, somewhere. It's not nice, but we recognise it had to be done."

Meanwhile a friend who used to travel home from school with Milly every day said the night she disappeared she had got off the train a stop early to buy chips. Matthew Reed, 13, said: "If only she had been with me that day she'd have been alright."

Matthew told police he had seen two separate men acting suspiciously in the run-up to Milly's disappearance. One man - described as looking like EastEnders drug dealer Lee Vickers - was pacing through the train on the train the night she disappeared. There was also an unshaven, pock-marked man who hurled abuse at children at Weybridge station the previous Friday. Matthew later saw him on the street where Milly lived as he did his paper-round.

Police have also spoken to a 12-year-old girl who heard screams from a railway embankment near where Milly was last seen. A friend said: "They were coming from behind the house where she was babysitting. She's just praying it's nothing to do with Milly."

HAVE YOU SEEN AMANDA 'MILLY' DOWLER? CONTACT POLICE ON 01372 471 212

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