I was twenty-seven then, the same age as my boyfriend. It was 2018, a Saturday morning, and we were visiting his family for the weekend. Nothing about that morning felt unusual—until it did.
My boyfriend’s mum was supposed to leave around 9:30 a.m. She had plans: she would take her niece with her to drop off Avon products to customers, then go shopping and get petrol. Everything was meant to be finished by 11 a.m. At least, that’s what she had said.
Sometime after 9 a.m., she left the house alone.
We didn’t realize that at first. We assumed she and her niece had simply gone earlier than planned. The house stayed quiet. Time passed.
At around 10 a.m., there was a knock on the door. It was my boyfriend’s cousin—her niece. She looked upset and confused. She asked where her aunt was and why she was late.
That was the moment everything shifted.
We told her we thought they had already gone together. Her face changed immediately. She started to panic. She insisted her aunt had promised to take her, and now she wasn’t answering her phone.
My boyfriend’s stepdad stepped in and decided to look for her. He took the niece with him and drove into town, checking places she usually went. Meanwhile, the rest of us started calling everyone we could think of—family, friends, neighbors. No one had seen her. No one knew where she was.
The worry grew fast.
My boyfriend’s stepdad went as far as the GP’s office and then the police station. We called hospitals. There was no trace of her anywhere. It was as if she had vanished.
Seven hours later, she came back.
She walked into the house like nothing had happened.
She wasn’t apologetic. She wasn’t confused—at least not in the way we expected. She was annoyed. Angry, even. She complained that her niece had gone and done the errands without her. She said everything should have been finished by 11 a.m., not dragged out until three or four in the afternoon. She was irritated that people were upset about her disappearance.
But none of it made sense.
She hadn’t bought shopping. She hadn’t filled the car with petrol. She seemed to have no idea how much time had passed, where she had been, or why everyone was panicking. The police later called to confirm she was back and advised her to see a doctor.
Two days later, another piece of the puzzle surfaced.
A friend of my boyfriend—from a job he had worked at before moving 100 miles away to live with me—called us. He said she had shown up at his workplace that same Saturday morning, around 10:30 a.m. She was acting strangely, asking for the manager, refusing to explain why she was there, and becoming defensive when questioned. After about thirty minutes, she left.
That was the last confirmed sighting.
After that, she was still missing for more than five hours. Her car hadn’t used much petrol at all.
To this day, we still don’t know where she went—or what happened during those lost hours.
