TEN years after the disappearance of their four-year-old daughter from a city park, Patrick and Maureen Kyle have revealed they will never give up hope that she will be returned to them.

The devastated parents, of Chestnut Avenue, Dogsthorpe, told this newspaper they still believe Angela will be found.

‘Although the case was closed many years ago, the police never found Angela’s body,’ Mr Kyle said. ‘And without a body to bury there is every chance that Angela will walk back into our lives one day. As long as we live, we’ll never stop hoping that will happen. We’ll always be waiting for her.’

Chloe pulls the cutting up closer to her nose, searching the eyes of Maureen and Patrick – for what, she isn’t sure. It’s obvious from this photograph that time has taken its toll on the two of them. Patrick’s once-black hair is now peppered with white around his ears; he’s grown a beard too which is filled in with grey. Two deep frown lines now fill the space between Maureen’s eyebrows, her hair not long and loose like it was when she was a young mother. It’s now cut more practically, less carefree. It must have broken her heart to trim off the locks that Angie herself had once touched.

‘Never trusted him,’ a voice behind her says.

Chloe feels someone leaning over her left shoulder.

She turns around. A middle-aged woman leans back in her seat once again.

‘How do you mean?’ Chloe asks.

‘Always thought he was hiding something.’

‘Like what?’ Chloe folds the cuttings, as if that small gesture will protect Maureen and Patrick’s ears.

‘Well, how many dads do you know who take their girls out to the park on the weekend?’

She sniffs, and Chloe thinks, though resists the urge to say, she doesn’t know any dads.

‘That was it, wasn’t it?’ the woman continues. ‘He left her, didn’t he? Well, I always thought he looked a bit shifty. Leaving a little girl in the park like that, even for a second, he deserved everything he got if you ask me.’

The woman pulls her handbag up under her large bosom. Sniffs again.

‘Well,’ Chloe starts, ‘it was only for a second . . .’

She has no idea why she’s defending Patrick. Perhaps after this time spent within the story, she feels some kind of loyalty to Maureen and Patrick, like they’re friends. Yes, like she knows them. She sits up a bit taller then. After all, hadn’t it only taken a second for Nan to go missing?

‘Don’t matter how long, you don’t leave your kids,’ the woman says. ‘Not even for a moment. How she stuck with him all these years I don’t know. If my husband had come home without any of ours, I’d have strung him up myself.’