The mother of missing RAF serviceman Corrie McKeague says she would rather be “waiting for a phone call than not” despite the agony of what news from the landfill site means.
Nicola Urquhart was speaking as the search for a trace of her son began again today at the waste site in Milton, Cambridgeshire.
Corrie went missing after a night out with friends in Bury St Edmunds on September 24 last year and was last seen on CCTV in Brentgovel Street in the town at 3.24am.
Speaking to the EADT, Mrs Urquhart said: “It seemed like a long time waiting when nothing was happening. I know things were happening behind the scenes but from my point of view, it didn’t seem like there was any active searching for Corrie.
“In some ways, it took away some of the stress. I never stop thinking about Corrie, I think about him everyday, but I didn’t have that stress of waiting for the call.
“Now the search has started, we’re back to that again when I daren’t look at my phone every time it rings or I get a text.
“It’s very difficult to explain. It’s horrible but then I would rather be waiting for the phone call than not.”
Mrs Urquhart said the one-year anniversary event held in Bury St Edmunds last month, when she retraced the steps of Corrie’s night out, was extremely difficult, but ended up being a positive experience.
“I’d walked that route so many times but when I turned the corner to see all the press and people there, I just wanted to turn around. I felt sick to my stomach,” she said.
“But it ended up being a positive day and it was great to be able to put names to some of the faces in the Facebook group.”
Mrs Urquhart praised the support she has received from the thousands of members of the social media group Find Corrie.
She said: “It astounds me, whether I’m in Bury St Edmunds or Scotland, when it feels like no-one in the world knows what I’m going through, that a stranger will come up to me and give me a hug or say ‘I hope they find Corrie’.
“Or someone will put something nice on the Facebook group and I never could have imagined just how much of a help those people have been.
“I really don’t know what I would have done without their support.”
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