'We've been in limbo for 25 years. I need to know what happened to my daughter'

Carmel Fenech vanished in 1998 but her family refuse to give up hope despite being no closer to the answers they crave

- HARRIETTE BOUCHER

Nearly three decades after Carmel Fenech disappeared, her family is still out looking for her.

Her sister Mandy often sleeps in her car, parking outside the places Carmel used to visit before she vanished in 1998, unwilling to give up the search.

Carmel is one of five siblings in a close-knit family in Peckham, and her absence has never loosened its grip on them. Time has passed, lives have moved on, but the unanswered question of what happened to her remains as raw as ever.

Her mother, Deirdre Fenech, told The Independent: “Even now, I’m still looking for a 16-year-old girl, not a 40-year-old woman. That’s my baby. That’s my child that I carried with me for nine months... She’s been gone longer than I held her in my arms. I’m never going to give up looking for her.”

The Independent has raised £165,000 to launch SafeCall, a free new service to help the 70,000 children reported missing each year to find support and safety no matter what, and continues to campaign for the cause. Ms Fenech knows how heartbreaking the pain of having a child disappear is.

When Carmel, like many 14-year-olds, began making new friends, going to parties and staying out late, her mother didn’t think anything of it. But what she didn't know was that Carmel had been introduced to crack cocaine. She didn't look like a drug addict and was never rude or moody. "She always had a great personality, always good fun," her mother said.