Exhibition to find missing children

Sixteen years ago Louise Kay vanished.

The 18-year-old had spent the evening with friends in a nightclub and was last seen dropping one of them off in her father's Ford Fiesta.

Since then neither she, nor the car, have been seen.

Today, in an effort to jog memories, a charity has issued a picture of how she might look now at the age of 34.

It shows how she might have developed from a happy teenager into a confident career woman.

Her image is one of 50 of young people to be featured in a new exhibition. Their faces will stare out at commuters in Liverpool Street station in the hope of raising awareness.

Louise's sister Nicola, 39, still lives in Eastbourne, where Louise vanished. She said: "The last 16 years have been very difficult but Mum and Dad are strong and we just get through it.

"We are always hoping she could be out there but Louise was not the sort of person who would just go off - I do not think she would have put us through it.

"I feel that something did happen to her but I do not want to give up hope."

Tomorrow's exhibition marks International Missing Children's Day. It will highlight the work of the National Missing Person's Helpline (NMPH) and includes children from as far afield as Germany and the Netherlands.

The image of Louise was devised by the NMPH's head of ID and reconstruction, Teri Blythe. She uses photographs of

her subjects as well as pictures of their parents.

"It is a combination of science and art. You need scientific knowledge to know how faces change, though there are some environmental factors such as smoking and weight gain which you cannot predict," she said.

The exhibition will also include "Adam", the torso-in-the-Thames boy, and other unidentified children, some of whom are possibly victims of human trafficking. Also featured are Damien Nettles, who went missing from the Isle of Wight aged 16 in 1996, teenager Lucy Sefton, from Hackney, and an unidentified boy known only as Ali Z, last seen in Essex.