It is a recurring dream that has haunted Jen King for the last 10 years. Her missing friend Claudia Lawrence strolls back through the door of their local one night.
And she is full of remorse for vanishing without trace.
“Claudia kind of goes all coy as she tries to explain where she’s been – and she says to me, ‘Well, you know, it just spiralled out of control’, says Jen.
“And then I wake up and realise it’s not true. If only it was. I don’t think for one moment she’s responsible for herself going missing, but that’s what it’s like in my dream.”
Jen, 34, who once shared a house with Claudia, still lives in hope that detectives’ fears are wrong – and that the York chef, who should be celebrating her 45th birthday next week, was not murdered after she vanished in March, 2009.
Claudia’s disappearance was both shocking and utterly baffling. Not a single clue was left behind.
The last known contact was a text she sent to a friend at 8.23pm that night. She had also spoken to her parents Peter, 72, and her mum Joan, 75, that evening,
And after she failed to turn up for her 6am canteen shift at York University next morning, her mobile and the rucksack in which she carried her chef’s outfit on her two-mile walk to work were never found.
In the decade since, North Yorkshire Police have spent £1 million on the case.
And as she grieved for her missing pal, Jen found herself terrifyingly caught up in an investigation that focused on 35-year-old Claudia’s sex life.
Five regulars at her local were arrested on suspicion of murder, all released without charge.
One was Jen’s partner, and six years after Claudia’s disappearance she had her home turned upside down by cold case detectives from a newly created Major Crime Unit.
It was a full agonising year before the Crown Prosecution Service concluded there was no evidence linking him to the case.
Four years on, Jen says the police obsession with Claudia’s sex life still rankles.
“She was a single girl,” she says. “She was entitled to have dates and to go out with guys and do whatever she wanted.
“There was nobody serious I knew about at the time she disappeared.”
“I don’t have any animosity towards the police. I have to believe they did what they did with the best of intentions – they were trying to find my friend. But all that should have happened in 2009.
“Then, we expected every single one of us to have our houses searched as part of the investigation.
“We would have welcomed police into our homes and let them tear them apart if it would have satisfied them we were innocent.
“But the way it was done – nothing can quite prepare you for it when you know you have done nothing wrong.”
The friends met in 2006 when Jen started working as a barmaid at the Nags Head, a few doors from Claudia’s home in Heworth.
“The following year I ended up moving in with her when a relationship ended,” says Jen, who slips into the present tense from time to time as she talks of the pal she misses so much.
“We were quite similar in that we both just wanted to go out and have a laugh. She is just one of those really special friends. If I was ever upset she would leave a little note to cheer me up.
“She’s incredibly caring. She was there when I needed her – she gave me a roof over my head and made me feel incredibly welcome. Her life was very ordinary. That is why I find it so hard to accept what happened. She likes the simple things in life.”
Jen last saw Claudia at the Nags Head just three days before she went missing.
She says: “We’d all been in the pub for Cheltenham Day on the Friday before she disappeared. We had both been drunk. She had beer fear. If she’d been drinking she was always worried she’d done something to upset someone. She never had.
“Then after I saw her on the Sunday we texted like normal.
“The last text she sent was saying she had a row of 12 early start shifts and how she wasn’t going to have a life for a bit. I think she was walking to work that morning and something happened. Either she was snatched or coerced into a vehicle.”
Jen, who works in digital marketing, struggled with anxiety after the loss of her friend.
“I lost my way and drank too much. It was my way of coping. Then I had hypnotherapy and acupuncture and learned how to deal with it.”
Now, as the 10-year anniversary approaches, Jen says: “I think about her every day. Some days I think she’s alive, some days I think she can’t be. It’s like having an equation you can’t quite find the answer to.”
“If she is dead, I want to be able to lay her to rest. And if she’s still alive, I want her to be home so we can begin to put her back together again.”