Mum was 'cross' after daughter didn't come home until realising something was 'very wrong'

A mother has spoken of the last time she spoke to her daughter, before realising something was wrong.

Andrea Gharsallah spoke to her daughter Georgina at 7.30am on Wednesday, March 7, 2018. She had been out with a friend the night before and asked for a lift home, reports the Mirror.

Andrea, 62, recalled: "The morning Georgina rang me I was on my way to work and couldn’t give her a lift."

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Georgina Gharsallah is just one of the 170,000 people who are reported missing every year in the UK. Her mum Andrea and sisters make up one of the worried families who call the Missing People helpline every 90 seconds seeking help when their loved ones vanish into thin air.

“The morning Georgina rang me I was on my way to work and couldn’t give her a lift,” says Andrea, who worked long hours and nights as a carer, no doubt wishing she could go back and change the future. But Georgina was a grown woman and could look after herself and, after the phone call, she was seen walking into Worthing town centre. That was the last time she was seen or heard of again.

Unlike many missing cases, it wasn’t immediately obvious that Georgina was gone. “I wasn’t worried at all at the time,” recalls Andrea. “Georgina often disappeared for days on end and her mobile wasn’t always working either.

“Her boys were living with their dad, and it took a week before me and her sisters began to realise something was wrong.” After ringing round Georgina’s friends and then hospitals, they began to feel uneasy and called the police.

“Local officers came round and took the details and said someone would be in touch,” says Andrea. “They said she was medium risk and had probably gone to stay with mates or something. But my daughter, Sonya, complained and said Georgina was quite vulnerable and should be considered high risk. She had drinking issues and had suffered with bulimia.”

When, several weeks later, the police contacted Georgina’s bank to see when her account was last used, Andrea heard nothing had been taken since the Wednesday morning she had gone missing. Her heart sank.

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“Up till that point,” she admits, “I had actually felt cross about her not coming home for her sons, but now I realised something was very wrong.” Andrea, a mum-of-four and gran-of-three, apologises for the cluttered living conditions in her two-bedroom flat in Worthing, East Sussex. It’s a bit of a tight squeeze now that she has her daughter’s two teenage sons living with her.

“Georgina would be 37 now,” she says, recalling her as a teenage tearaway who loved cooking and could time a roast lunch to perfection. Local Brighton girl Andrea met Georgina’s dad, a Libyan student, Gaseem Gharsallah when she was just 17. “We got married when I was 18 and I moved with him to Tripoli for 24 years,” she explains.

The couple had four girls, Sara, 41, Georgina, and twins Sonja and Aria, both 34, before returning to settle in Worthing. After Andrea and her husband split, she moved with the girls to her present flat 20 years ago.

Following a series of office admin jobs, Georgina was 22 when she met her boyfriend and they had Alfie, now 15, and Hayden, 14. Andrea explains: “There’s only nine months between them. But she split up with the boys’ dad soon after that.”

Her ex had custody of the boys, who were aged six and seven, when she disappeared, although she was living with another on-off-boyfriend. They spent every weekend with Andrea, so they could see their mum. A month before she went missing, Georgina phoned her mum saying she was leaving her boyfriend, adding: “I’m going to turn my life around, and get a job, and my own place.”

Andrea was always there to help her and agreed Georgina could stay while she looked for her own flat. “Her life was chaotic,” admits Andrea, who believes losing custody of her boys was traumatic. “She did drink and smoke a bit of weed, but now I look back, she must have had mental health issues.”

Early in the investigation into her disappearance came a major breakthrough, when CCTV footage showed Georgina chatting to a man working in a supermarket in Brighton the night before she disappeared. When the police accessed Georgina’s phone records they found 60 text messages between herself and a man who worked in the shop.

“The missing case became a murder case,” Andrea explains. “Police arrested him and his housemate because he had lied about knowing Georgina.” But there was insufficient evidence and they were released on bail after 48 hours. Meanwhile, Georgina became a missing person again.

“It was always a different officer who came round to speak to us,” says Andrea, who is very critical of the police investigation. She compares this to Missing People, who have given her the same case worker throughout.

“You don’t know what to do when someone first goes missing,” says Andrea. “Right from the beginning, the charity has offered guidance for dealing with the police, media and the public, and suggested new ways to reach people with appeals – including digital boards in railway stations.”

Meanwhile, Andrea’s grandsons had come to live with her. Then, in August 2019, she was visited by a new Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) who had taken over Andrea’s case. “DCI Andy Wolstenholme came to see me and brought a laptop to show CCTV that had been found of someone who might be Georgina walking down Worthing high street with an unidentified woman. I recognised my daughter straight away – it was her.”

Andrea then learned the CCTV had in fact been requested by police during the first investigation in April 2018. “It had sat there not being looked at until the new SIO Andy had taken over and reviewed the case,“ she explains. This resulted in Sussex Police referring themselves to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), who found various faults with the original investigation.

The Chief Constable apologised for the failings and told Andrea of the force’s ongoing commitment to the case. Sadly the woman on the CCTV was never identified and nobody has ever come forward. False sightings and cranks apart, Andrea’s relentless search and constant appeals for her daughter have come to nothing.

She also fears Georgina’s lifestyle hasn’t helped. “I went to do a radio appeal once and a listener rang up and said, ‘Oh she used to hang out with dodgy people’” she says. “But why should that mean Georgina’s disappearance is any less deserving of full investigation?”

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The boys are beginning to lose their memories of their mum. But, through all the turmoil and sadness, Andrea says her Missing People caseworker has been a godsend - calling her every month and on anniversaries, as well as inviting her to events, introducing her to other families and arranging counselling for her and Hayden.

“It’s a big community,” says Andrea. While a missing person can be declared dead after seven years if there is no evidence of life, despite being acutely aware of the likelihood that Georgina has passed, Andrea is adamant she won’t do that.

“Yes I do think she has come to harm,” she whispers. “I also have hope – I’ve read stories of how people suddenly turn up 20 years later.” Marathon running, which she began aged 52, was a coping strategy for a while. “My first was the Brighton marathon and then I started doing ultra marathons,” she says. “I carried on running to raise thousands for Missing People but I don’t do it any more.”

But one marathon Andrea will never stop running is the race to find her daughter. Detective Superintendent Andy Wolstenholme offered his support to Georgina’s family, saying he shares their frustration.

He told the Mirror : “We remain fully committed to finding out what happened to her. We continue, as we have throughout, to investigate any viable lines of enquiry. We have searched numerous locations, conducted more than 1,000 house-to-house enquiries and looked into nearly 100 potential sightings.

“In August 2019, her disappearance was recorded as a homicide. Sadly, we have to consider the possibility that Georgina has come to harm at the hands of another. All missing people, regardless of the circumstances and regardless of their lifestyle or personal choices, are somebody’s son or daughter. Our investigation’s priority is to get to the truth of what happened to Georgina and bring a conclusion to all of these years of waiting."

A Crimestoppers reward of £20,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible remains in place. You can contact them online or on 0800 555 111 or report online or call us on 101 quoting Operation Pavo.