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Often it is the unusual, the deviation from the ‘normal’, that serves as the catalyst to capture the public’s imagination.
But when it came to the disappearance of Nicola Bulley it was, perhaps, the fact that everything about her was apparently so ordinary that piqued so much interest.
On a cold January day she left home and dropped her two daughters, aged six and nine, at school before setting off to walk the family dog by the river. As a multi-tasking 45-year-old mum, she also logged on to a Teams call with work colleagues.
So far so normal. Then suddenly it wasn’t.
On that Friday morning, January 27, last year, Nicola disappeared. Her phone and her dog Willow’s harness were found on a bench, looking out on the River Wyre, in the Lancashire village of St Michael’s on Wyre, where she lived with her children and her partner of 12 …