MYSTERY PHONE CALLS FROM MISSING GAYNOR TO FRIEND

Gaynor said to me: I'm feeling a bit funny today'

- Paul Jevees

MISSING mother Gaynor Lord made two phone calls to a friend on the day she disappeared, it has emerged.

Julie Butcher was contacted twice in two hours but told her friend she would have to call her back.

The reason for the calls is unclear. As the search to find Gaynor, 55, enters its seventh day today, Julie said that she was devastated she could not speak to her friend shortly before she vanished. She added: "I feel terrible. I feel so sorry for the family. It's not like Gaynor to do this." The first call was at 2.15pm last Friday, December 8 while Gaynor was still at work on a concession counter at Jarrolds department store in Norwich.

Julie, who owns a bridal hairdressing business, said: "I explained [to Gaynor] I was sorting out the internet and my phone rang and it was one of my clients and I had to speak to them.

"I said I would call her back and she said 'Yes'." But when Julie called Gaynor back seven or eight minutes later she could not get through so left a voicemail and sent a WhatsApp message, saying she was free to talk.

She explained: "I think she was still at work when she called me. Maybe that's why she couldn't answer." Julie received another call from Gaynor at 4.15pm, moments after the last sighting of her on CCTV, but said it "sounded like a 'pocket call'. I could hear movement in her pocket". Julie added: "I keep going over the conversation. If I hadn't answered that call would she have talked to me?" According to a colleague, Gaynor told him she was "feeling a bit funny and a bit off".

Worrying She was shown on CCTV leaving work more than an hour before her shift was due to finish.

A sales assistant who works close to Gaynor's stand, where she sold Bullards gin, said: "She's a really nice woman. She said something about feeling a bit funny.