By KATHRYN KNIGHT

Last updated at 00:53 18 May 2008

Angela Wright has a vivid recollection of her teenage daughter, Gemma, returning home one night and telling her she was "dating a Trowbridge."

His name was Glyn, he was 19, and his father Nigel had been at school with Mrs Wright.

"I remember thinking: 'Oh no, I don't think so,' Angela recalls. "I'd known the Trowbridges a long time and they weren't the most trustworthy family. I didn't want my daughter to get involved."

Scroll down for more ...

Lisa Wright was a bright student who planned to study psychology at university

Little did she know that Gemma's relationship would be the least of her troubles: three years after that uneasy mother-daughter chat, the Trowbridge name has caused far, far more angst.

Angela Wright admits allowing her daughter to have sex when she was just 14

Last month, Angela's youngest daughter, 16-year-old Lisa, ran away from home to be with Glyn's father, Nigel, who, at 46, is precisely 30 years her senior. Lisa was due to sit her GCSEs this week and was expected to achieve a succession of As and A*s.

Nigel Trowbridge is an unemployed father of five - including a daughter who is a year younger

than Lisa - and would not strike you as a particularly ideal catch for anyone, let alone a girl who is meant to be taking her GCSEs.

To say Angela is horrified is an understatement. This, after all, is a man she had welcomed into her home as an extended member of the family.

Despite Angela's reservations, her daughter Gemma had indeed settled down with Glyn Trowbridge, and three months ago their first child was born.

After the arrival, Angela and Nigel Trowbridge enjoyed a mutual toast as the baby's grandparents.

"Now I look back on that and feel sick to my stomach, because I'm convinced that Nigel was already wooing Lisa," says Angela.

It is an unholy mess, no doubt about it. To date, Lisa has been missing from home for more than three weeks, and you only need to glance at the

photos of a smiling young girl in school uniform dotted around the comfortable living room of the family home in Dagenham, East London, to realise quite how young she is.

Scroll down for more ...

Nigel Trowbridge, who is 30 years older than Lisa, wooed her with love tokens and gifts

"I feel completely helpless, because there's nothing I can do," Angela says. "As a mother, you feel you should protect your children, but I can't do that - it makes me feel so useless. I just don't want Lisa to throw her life away.

"I am disgusted and furious with Nigel, of course I am - he has betrayed everyone in the worse possible way. But I can't blame just him. Lisa has played her part and she must take responsibility for her actions, too.

"The whole thing is sheer madness. I can only hope and pray she will come to her senses before it's too late."

The signs, it must be said, are not promising: aside from the occasional call from her mobile phone, and a brief visit home last weekend, Lisa has refused to contact her mother, and will not reveal where she is staying.

And while police are concerned, at 16 Lisa is not under-age. Unless she can be shown to be in danger, there is little they can do to intervene.

It is an agonising situation for her mother - and a sorry reflection of a society in which young girls are sexualised at an increasingly young age.

Angela admits that Lisa was sexually active at 14 with her then boyfriend, so perhaps in this misguided girl's mind it is not such a big step to run away at 16 with a man not far off his 50th birthday.

Angela, a 45-year-old dental nurse, says she has done her best to provide a stable family environment for her daughters, despite being separated from Lisa's father.

The couple remain friends and she says her husband David, a forklift truck driver, has proved himself a hands-on father, one who is equally horrified by the fate that has befallen his youngest daughter.

Scroll down for more ...

Lisa as a young child

Angela met David while they were next-door neighbours in Barking, East London, and they married in 1988 after a year-long courtship.

By doing so, David took on the care of Angela's elder daughter Vicky, now 25, from a previous relationship, and the couple had two further children, Gemma, now 19, and Lisa.

"Vicky and Gemma were very outgoing, but Lisa was always a shy little girl," Angela recalls. "She was so shy that she used to hide behind the sofa when we had visitors, particularly if they were men. Sometimes she would actually growl, which was her way of saying she was frightened."

She was also, Angela recalls, a solitary soul. "The three girls would all play together but, as she got older, Lisa was much more the one who would go upstairs and amuse herself, listen to music or read. She was happy doing her own thing."

Always a bright girl, Lisa did well at primary school and, as she entered adolescence, Angela insists she was strict with her - as she was with her other daughters.

"I like to think I was a disciplinarian, which makes what has happened all the harder," insists Angela.

"I brought all my daughters up to know the meaning of respect, and I'm not ashamed to say that on occasions I would administer a smack to the kids

when I thought it was needed. Not that Lisa was particularly difficult."

This dedication to her family, however, did not extend to her marital relationship, which broke down three years ago.

"We'd had problems for some time and eventually we both decided it would be best if he moved out, although we remain friends," says Angela.

It is impossible to say quite how much her parents' separation affected the emotional state of the then 13-year-old Lisa, although, in fairness, it certainly did not affect her schoolwork.

At her new school, teachers reported her as a bright student who, if she continued to apply herself, was on course for a hatful of A and A*-grade GCSEs. In discussions with her mother, Lisa would excitedly talk of her plans to study psychology at university.

Those plans are now presumably on hold: Lisa was meant to be taking the first of her GCSEs this week, but so far has failed to show up for any of them.

Angela admits that Lisa's early sexual experiences should have made her more watchful. Two years ago, Lisa introduced to her mother a boy who she claimed was 16 years old.

Yet Angela soon learned that he was, in fact, 18 - which Lisa had known all along.

"She had lied to me because she knew I wouldn't approve of the age gap - and she was right. I was furious when I realised," Angela said.

"My daughter Gemma had her suspicions, so I went to the records office and found out his date of birth."

That, however, does not alter the fact that Angela also knew Lisa was sleeping with her boyfriend from early on in their relationship. Regardless of whether the boyfriend was 16 or 18, Lisa was only 14.

Had Angela not tried to dissuade Lisa from such early sexual activity?

"I'd always spoken to all my daughters about sex education - my belief was that if they were going to get involved, I'd rather they were informed," she says awkwardly.

"Of course, I would have preferred her not to, but I was happier she felt she could be honest with me rather than going behind my back."

As it was, the relationship fizzled out after a year or so, and for a time calm prevailed. Lisa seemed to focus on her studies, and, indeed, after Angela suffered a heart attack last year, was full of concern for her mother.

"I think my ill health scared her a bit. She was very upset," Angela says.

Perhaps Lisa might have been taking her all-important exams this week were it not for the fact that her elder sister Gemma, then aged 16, had bumped into Glyn Trowbridge at a party, and the two had started dating.

By coincidence, Glyn's father Nigel had been to school with the girls' mother. "Nigel was a really good friend at school, although we'd lost touch a bit," says Angela. "I saw him from time to time and we would always pass the time of day.

"But I was a bit wary of the family - I knew his brother Mark was in prison for murder, so I wasn't thrilled when Gemma came home saying she had started dating Nigel's son."

Yet she found Glyn a "nice, easygoing boy," and on the basis of his blossoming relationship with Gemma, it seemed entirely natural for Angela to rekindle her friendship with Nigel, who was separated from his wife.

"We met up for a drink and reminisced about old times," Angela recalls. "We were never going to be bosom buddies again, but it was perfectly nice."

When, two years later, Gemma announced she was pregnant, it seemed entirely natural that Nigel would pop round throughout her pregnancy, apparently excited by the arrival of a grandchild.

"I actually cooked for him a couple of times because I knew he was living on his own, and even offered to do his washing," Angela recalls. "I was extending a helping hand to a friend."

But she is now cursing her kindness, convinced the real reason for Nigel's visits was a growing fascination with her daughter Lisa - visits which increased in frequency when Angela was hospitalised again over Easter, this time with a kidney infection.

"I was away for a few days and, because Gemma had just given birth and was staying at my house, Nigel was around a lot," Angela says.

"When I came home, Gemma said to me she thought something was going on with him and Lisa. She said they always seemed to be whispering and were very cosy together, but I told her not to be ridiculous. I told her he was an old man - I simply didn't believe it."

Perhaps she should have paid more heed. A couple of weeks later, at the start of April, Lisa returned home late on a school night, and was dropped off by Nigel.

Angela says: "When I confronted her and asked what she was doing in his car, she said there had been some trouble on the bus and she had phoned Nigel for help because he lived close by. I asked her why she hadn't called me and she just shrugged."

Even this, however, was not enough to set alarm bells ringing - that only started when a friend mentioned that she had seen Lisa visiting Nigel's flat more than once.

"Suddenly, suggestions that had seemed preposterous turned into a horrible fear that this man had seduced my daughter," Angela says.

"I went round to his flat immediately and Lisa was there. I told her to get

home and told him to stay away from her. I felt sick.

"I asked Lisa if she was sleeping with him, and she refused to give me a straight answer. We had an enormous fight and I told her she would not be seeing him again.

"I grounded her for a time at home, and she seemed to accept it. I thought she had just been pushing the boundaries, hanging out with an older man, a little rebellion." But it was clearly more serious than that.

On the last night before Lisa disappeared, mother and daughter bonded over a girlie evening in, eating strawberries and ice cream on Angela's bed.

"I remember she said to me: 'It's all coming to an end isn't it, Mum?'" says Angela. "I asked: 'What do you mean?' She said she was talking about her exams and this phase of her life.

"I agreed, but told her there was an exciting new chapter ahead of her. Now I know what she was planning - to run away with Nigel - it makes me feel so sad. I thought she was talking about a real future, full of hope - not one with this man."

The following morning, Lisa left for school as normal, and Angela had no reason to be suspicious - until a phone call later that day from school revealed that Lisa had not turned up. Nor was it the first time she had missed her lessons.

"When I met with the school, they told me that she hadn't really been there for weeks," says Angela.

"I just felt a deep sense of betrayal and anger as I took the news in. I realised she'd been completely deceiving me."

In the bewildering hours that followed, she desperately tried to contact her daughter, but Lisa's mobile phone was switched off.

After searching Lisa's bedroom, meanwhile, she discovered love tokens and gifts from Nigel, including a Leona Lewis album with romantic lyrics underlined and a message scrawled beside which read: "This is how I feel about you."

Angela called the police, who forced their way into Trowbridge's flat and found some of Lisa's clothes and a bottle of her perfume.

Today, three weeks on, Angela is no closer to knowing where her daughter is, although she does know she is with Nigel. She recently found a photograph of him in one of Lisa's handbags, along with a love

letter to him in which she declares: "I'm willing to become Mrs Lisa Veronica Trowbridge for you ...I love you with all my heart, my soul, my body and my mind."

A week ago, Lisa finally made contact with Angela to tell her she was "OK," and also made a brief return visit home last weekend to pick up fresh clothes.

"I gave her something to eat and begged her to stay. I said there was nothing that had happened that couldn't be sorted out," Angela says.

"But she wouldn't listen. She said she was desperately in love, and we wouldn't understand. She wouldn't tell me where she was staying, even though I was begging her to.

"She was rude and defiant, not like the Lisa she once was. In the end, short of locking her up in her room, I had to let her go. I felt completely helpless. I wanted to know what had happened to my sweet little girl."

What has happened, of course, is a depressingly familiar tale of a

sexually aware girl's head being turned by a middle-aged man who should know much better.

Perhaps Lisa will grow out of her infatuation before any real damage is done - though failing to sit her GCSEs will certainly compromise her future.

In the meantime, a despairing Angela Wright can only sit and wait at home for her errant daughter to come to her senses.