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stopped scores of people and no one knew anything about where April
     was. I hoped against hope that I’d walk through the back door and she would be there to greet me.
    Of course, she wasn’t. I sank into Paul’s arms and dissolved into tears. I wanted to head straight back out, but a police officer gently suggested it was best if I stay at home
     and wait for news. I reluctantly accepted her advice. The police were doing everything they could to find April and I needed to preserve my energy, as no one knew what the next few hours had in
     store for us.
    Almost as soon as Coral had gone out looking, I made the decision to stay at home. My vision problems meant I wouldn’t be able to provide much help to the others,
especially in the fading light. But, more than anything, I couldn’t bear the thought of her returning to find both Coral and I had gone. I had to believe she’d be home safe and sound
soon, but it was already past her bedtime and she’d no doubt be exhausted and emotional when we got her back.
    It was more than I could bear to think of my beautiful girl being scared or in pain. She was such a sweet, funny, loveable child. I couldn’t grasp why anyone could ever want to hurt her.
Surely, the person who had taken her would just look into those big brown eyes and decide there and then he could never harm her?
    Still, it didn’t make the waiting around any easier. For the next few hours I paced from the front door to the back door, hoping beyond hope that I’d soon see April walking up the
path. Our house was packed with people and the situation began to get very stressful, especially when Coral arrived back home distraught and in need of some space to process what we were dealing
with.
    Eventually my friend Rich took matters into his own hands and appointed himself as our doorman, only letting close family and friends into our house. We were hugely grateful to each and every
person who had joined the search for April, but Rich recognised that having so many people in the house was becoming suffocating for Coral and me.
    The police didn’t have much information to give us, but at some point in the evening I recall being told that senior officers including Detective Superintendent Andy John, who was leading
the case, had agreed Dyfed-Powys Police should issue the UK’s first ever nationwide Child Rescue Alert. The system had been used in the USA for many years and was adopted in the UK in 2010,
although it hadn’t yet been put into practice. It meant that images of April would be circulated to the whole country by the police via the media, so anyone who saw her picture would be on
high alert. We’d later discover it had not been an easy decision for the officers to make – as the description of the vehicle April was taken in was very vague. Issuing such a
high-profile alert could have risked the investigation team being swamped with information, which could potentially have hindered rather than helped the search, but those involved quickly decided
the threat to April was so great that they didn’t have much choice. Although the outcome was not as we’d hoped, we will always be grateful to them for making this difficult decision in
such stressful circumstances.
    By now there were hundreds of people looking for April and I had to keep believing there was a chance we might find her. Jazmin had gathered a group of friends and they were knocking on doors
all over the town, asking anyone they could find if they knew anything. We told ourselves that someone, somewhere, must know something.
    When your child goes missing, your concept of time is turned completely on its head. Every second without them seems like an eternity, yet you’re desperate to stop the clock because the
chances of finding him or her safe and well diminish with each hour that passes. I didn’t know much about child abductions, because these things simply didn’t happen in Machynlleth, but
I’d read in the papers that the