THE strain of not knowing whether their girls were alive or deadwas etched deep on the faces of Nicola Wells and Sharon Chapman.
At 11:30am yesterday, the mothers of Holly and Jessica faced thecameras to make yet another appeal for information about thedisappearance of their daughters.
It was an emotional session. Twelve days after their daughtersdisappeared it was another chance to appeal to the public, toreinvigorate a police inquiry which appeared to have hit a brickwall.
Through her tears, Jessica's mother pleaded for their safe return."Give them back. Just give them back. Put an end to all of this forthem," she sobbed. Her husband Leslie took up the plea: "Someone'sgot them. They are not their children. They are our children. We wantthem back. We miss them so much."
The families have been through it all in the last few days - amysterious green car with children struggling in the back seats, aspurious sighting of the girls on a road they never walked, ajogger's fears over graves that turned out to be the work of badgers.Each time their hopes were raised or their fears heightened, only forpolice to confess they had been stumbling up another blind alley.
Four hours after yesterday's press conference, it all began again.Police announced that they were speaking to a school caretaker andhis girlfriend about the disappearance of the girls and they hadbegun a search of the couple's home in Soham, the girls' school andthe local Soham Village College. The families, as ever, were beingkept up to date on developments.
Again, police appeared reluctant to raise the families' hopes toohigh.
Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb would only describe it as "oneof many active and interesting lines of inquiry".
His caution was understandable. When the families had spokenearlier in the day, they referred to the "surreal" ordeal of the pasttwo weeks and particularly about the agonising night on Tuesdaywaiting for police to excavate two apparent graves, which turned outto be badger setts.
Mr Wells, 38, said: "We are being kept informed, as was ourrequest, of any developments. Members of our family have asked us whyperhaps we were told about the graves being dug in Newmarket, butvery clearly that was our request.
"You can't change the ballpark as things develop. We asked forevery single development to be relayed to us."
It was nine days since the families made their first joint publicappeal but Mrs Chapman, 43, admitted that they had lost track of thedays.
"Time doesn't mean anything. Hours and days just seem to roll intoone. Before you know it, it's dark again. You don't realise the day'sgone by."
Mrs Wells felt the same: "It is certainly surreal. The days havejust blended. It seems extraordinary that we are approaching anotherSunday already." There have been many false dawns since the girlsdisappeared two Sundays ago after spending the day playing together,and police have found themselves wading through thousands of reportsof possible sightings offered up by a public desperate - andsometimes too desperate - to help. The day after the girlsdisappeared, there was some excitement after a woman reported seeingthe girls on the main A10 road in Little Thetford, Cambridgeshire,but her account was soon discounted.
By the Friday, police attention had turned to Holly's computer.Officers said an initial examination of the machine had suppliedsignificant lines of inquiry and there was widespread speculationthat the girls had been lured away by someone they met in an internetchatroom.
The following day the line of inquiry was snuffed out when policeadmitted that the girls had not attempted to contact anybody.
With a week gone and still no news, police revealed abreakthrough. Taxi driver Ian Webster had reported following a greensaloon car on the night the girls vanished and seeing the motorist infront struggling with two children and swerving across the road.
The hunt moved to Newmarket, where the mystery driver was headed,but there was embarrassment for the police when it emerged that MrWebster had reported the sighting a week earlier. He said he was"gobsmacked" that it had taken police so long to follow it up. Thecar and driver, however, were not found.
On Tuesday there was a more sinister development after a joggerwho had reported hearing "teenagers' screams" while out walking hisdog a week earlier contacted police again to say that he had foundtwo areas of disturbed earth.
The area was cordoned off and scenes of crime and forensic expertswere called to the scene.
The families spent a sleepless night waiting for information fromthe scene but many newspapers were convinced that the news would bebad, a view reflected in their pessimistic headlines the nextmorning. The mounds of earth, however, turned out to contain nobodies.
In an attempt to move the inquiry on, police tried a differenttack on Thursday, appealing directly to any abductor to release thegirls and setting a midnight deadline to call a special policehotline, the number of which was e-mailed to Jessica's phone. No-onecalled. It was another disappointment for the families in a fortnightwhich had held only disappointment.
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