For 20 years, Nicki Durbin has lived in a constant state of grief, unable to mourn the loss of her son, whose fate has remained a mystery for the last two decades.
Luke Durbin, who was 19 at the time, vanished on 12 May 2006 after a night out with friends in Ipswich, never to return to his home in Hollesley, near Woodbridge, Suffolk.
His disappearance came in the year when Saddam Hussein was executed, Tony Blair was Prime Minister, and Twitter first went online. And that length of time is not lost on Nicki, who points out, with it being 20 years since she last set eyes on him, Luke has now been missing “longer than we had him”.
“Every anniversary is difficult, but I think saying 20 years out loud is just so painful; that’s a whole life,” she said.
“It’s longer than we had Luke. We had Luke for 19 years, and now he has been gone for 20.”
