A desperate mother fears she may not see her long-lost daughter before she dies.

The elderly woman is trying one last time to track down the daughter she has not seen for 36 years.

Olive Hampson’s daughter Pamela disappeared without a trace from her flat in Hove in 1973 at the age of 25.

Mrs Hampson said that in the past three and a half decades she had never given up hope of finding her alive, but fears she will die before they are reunited.

Mrs Hampson said: “I’m not getting any younger. I’m 86 and I wonder whether I’ll get to see her again before I die.

“My husband died five years ago. He never got a chance to find out what happened to her.

“She was the first born and he idolised her. She really was daddy’s little girl and it broke his heart.”

Pamela had run away from the family home in Melton Mowbray Leicestershire to live with boyfriend Harry Cooper in Cross Street, Hove in 1971.

She kept in contact with her parents by letter, but two years later she disappeared from her flat without taking any of her belongings with her.

Her landlord said that Mr Cooper had left 12 months before.

Mrs Hampson said the police had never investigated whether there was foul play involved in Pamela’s disappearance.

She said: “The police officer’s exact words have never left me. He said ‘unless you think someone has done her in and put her under the floorboards there’s nothing we can do’.”

Pamela has been registered as a missing person since she disappeared. There have been no sightings of her in 36 years.