Real life: “My daughter has been missing for 14 years”

Marg Law, 67, shares her true life story:

It was Friday night and, as usual, my 17-year-old daughter, Jenenne-Ann,  was curled up on the couch.

She had a small group of friends but was never one  for clubs and pubs.

“I don’t want to stand there all night listening to some bloke drivel on,” she always said.

She had a good head on her shoulders for someone so young. She was also great with children and loved babysitting for friends and family.

When she left school, Jenenne-Ann worked as a waitress at some of Perth’s  top restaurants.

A few boyfriends came and went over the years, but nobody special.

She wasn’t really doing much with her life; she was stuck in  a rut without much direction.

Then she did a nannying course at TAFE.

“I’m going to work in England,” she announced after qualifying with top marks.

“I’m so excited for you!”  I said. “It will do you the world  of good.”

She was 26 now. It was time she spread her wings.

She said goodbye to me and her younger brother, Corey, and flew to a nannying job in Buckinghamshire.

We kept in touch by email and the occasional phone call.

Though I’d split from the kids’ dad when they were little, Jenenne-Ann was close to  her granny,  my mother-in-law, Joyce.

Jenenne just before leaving for the UK 1998.

She wrote  to Joyce, and other friends and family.

Later, she got a new nannying job working with two families in London.

“The people are so nice,”  she said.

Her Aunty Gwen went to the UK for a holiday after Jenenne-Ann had been away about four years and caught up with her.

Gwen told me she seemed really happy.

In time, Jenenne-Ann got another job doing security work for an events company and started dating a young Danish man called Oliver.

“I’m going to Denmark  to meet his family,” she told me the next time  we spoke.

They later split up, though.

Later, she told me she’d decided to stay in London for a few more years.

Of course, I was thrilled for her, but I missed her terribly.

I couldn’t afford a trip to  the UK but Jenenne-Ann normally called or emailed every six weeks or so.

When my birthday came around and  I hadn’t heard from her for two months, I expected a call.

But I didn’t hear from her.

She was an adult, 31 now, obviously an independent woman.

Still, I was a little concerned.

I contacted Sarah, her flatmate in London.

She said Jenenne-Ann had moved out, but she didn’t know where she’d gone.

Then she said something that really raised the hairs  on the back of my neck.

Jenenne-Ann (in blue), with friend (name unknown), her flatmate Sarah and Sarah’s mum in 2002.

“She’d been a bit scatty – late for appointments, losing her passport, that kind of thing.”

One thing my daughter wasn’t was scatty. Jenenne-Ann was organised and methodical.

I thought about her failure  to keep in touch and now this sudden behaviour change.

 I wondered if she’d been having  a tough time – it was almost as if she’d wanted to disappear.

I got in touch with the Salvation Army tracing service in Perth and gave them her description.

“She’s 165cm tall, with grey-hazel eyes, brown hair  with blonde streaks and a mole on the right side of her upper lip,” I told them.

Surely there can’t be many Australian girls in London matching that description, I thought.

But they had no luck so I contacted the police here  and in London.

I started looking at flights  to the UK too, thinking I could look for her myself.

But the police advised against that. I got the impression I’d just get in  the way so I left it to them.

Unfortunately, they got nowhere.

It was as if Jenenne-Ann had vanished off the face of the earth.

Some monster could have murdered her and dumped  her body for all we knew.

But I never took that thought seriously.

I had this unshakable belief that she was still alive.

“I can’t explain why, I just know it,” I insisted to Corey.

If I was right, it meant she had to be using fake documents because her visa had run out.

That puzzled me because Jenenne-Ann was scrupulously honest.

Frankly, nothing about her disappearance  made any sense.

Jenenne in her kitchen in the UK in 1999.

She was listed on missing persons sites in Australia and the UK but  we never heard a word.

As the years passed I considered every possibility.

All I could come up with  was that she’d got involved with the wrong man and had gone into hiding for some reason, or she’d joined a cult.

About six years after she disappeared, the WA police took a DNA sample from me  at the request of the British police.

They wanted to compare  it against unidentified bodies found in the UK.

But I was still convinced Jenenne-Ann was alive.

“If she is alive then letting us all suffer like this is selfish,” Corey snapped.

“She must have her reasons,” I replied.

But it was incredibly hard to imagine what they might be.

Her grandmother Joyce was becoming old and frail by now.

“I just want to see her one more time before I die,” she told me.

Sadly, she passed away not long after with no news of Jenenne-Ann.

I still never lost hope.

Then, earlier this year, a British detective called me.

We got a breakthrough earlier this year.

“Margaret, I’m just letting you know there’s been a sighting of your daughter,” he said.

My heart felt like it stopped beating.

“What? Where?” I croaked.

“It was in 2015,” the detective replied, “At a mini cab office in Kilburn, north-west London. Jenenne-Ann was working there in admin and as a despatcher. She’d been there for nine years. Unfortunately, she’s moved on and we don’t know where she is now.”

In other words, she’d  been spotted but then vanished again!

I was thrilled but devastated at the same time.

“I always knew she was alive,” I choked to the detective.

The only other thing he could tell me was that she might have been in a relationship with a Spanish man and that she’d been using variations of her real name.