A FAMILY'S agonising wait for information about a wife and her mother who have been missing since last Sunday continues.Gavin McGuire and his 17-year-old daughter Beth are waiting anxiously for information at their home at Holton, near Halesworth, and hope that the next telephone call will bring the news they desperately want to hear.

A FAMILY'S agonising wait for information about a wife and her mother who have been missing since last Sunday continues.

Gavin McGuire and his 17-year-old daughter Beth are waiting anxiously for information at their home at Holton, near Halesworth, and hope that the next telephone call will bring the news they desperately want to hear.

Josephine McGuire, 53, left the family home on Sunday to collect her 88-year-old mother Doris Slatter from a Great Yarmouth hospital and they were expected to return to Suffolk later that day.

"I had expected my wife and her mother to return in time for a church service here in Holton Village Hall but was not too worried when they failed to arrive," said Mr McGuire yesterday.

However, when they had still not arrived by Sunday evening he became more concerned and telephoned the police to report his wife and mother-in-law as missing.

Following appeals in the media police officers have received a number of possible sightings across Norfolk and Suffolk but it is known that Mrs McGuire and Mrs Slatter visited friends at Milton Keynes on Sunday afternoon.

"My wife and mother-in-law have a lot of friends in the Milton Keynes area and spent more than hour with a friend on Sunday afternoon.

"My wife told our friends that she was 'on tour' with her mother," said Mr McGuire.

That piece of information has given hope to Mr McGuire and his daughter Beth that there is a reason for the disappearance.

"My wife and her mother are very close and I know it has upset my wife to see her mother in hospital for such a long time.

"I think she wants to give her mother a chance to visit areas that are special to them," said Mr McGuire.

"Her mother is on medication as she is suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and I believe that if my wife had returned here she knows I would have wanted to contact the hospital authorities so that is probably why she decided to set off without telling me," he said.

The uncertainty of their whereabouts is proving an agonising time for Mr McGuire, a teacher at the University of East Anglia, and his daughter.

"We just want to know that they are okay and safe.

"No one is going to be blamed for what has happened but we desperately need to know what is happening and where they are," said Beth, a student at Norwich High School.

Mrs McGuire is a teacher at Elm Tree Middle School, Lowestoft, and was known to be upset at her mother's deteriorating condition.

Mrs McGuire is described as white, about 5ft 6in tall, of proportionate build, with collar length straight brown hair. She wears glasses and, at the time she left Holton, was wearing dark blue slacks and a blue top.

Mrs Slatter is also white and about 5ft 6in tall. She is of medium build, has white hair and was wearing a white dress with orange, pink and yellow flowers on, and a peach cardigan.

It is believed they are likely to be travelling in a red Ford Fiesta registration number P636 AFT.

Anyone with information about the vehicle or who may have seen Mrs McGuire and Mrs Slatter since Sunday is asked to contact Suffolk police on 01986 835300.