'Mum kept on pacing up and down the street'

Milly's sister Gemma talks about the family's six-month ordeal

Nothing has been changed in Milly Dowler's bedroom since she disappeared six months ago. But in a moving interview, her older sister Gemma admitted that she still pops in to borrow clothes or perfume, as she has always done.

"We've got the same perfume," she said. "Mine ran out the other day so I thought, 'I'm sure Milly wouldn't mind.'"

Gemma told of her sense of loss and anger since Milly vanished in March, but also of how she will remember her sister. And she spoke of the trauma of the police investigation when every male member of the family, including her father, became a suspect.

Speaking a few days before Milly's body was discovered – and coinciding with the six-month anniversary of her disappearance – Gemma said: "When someone's missing you haven't got the answers. When someone dies, you grieve, but eventually life carries on."

Asked to speculate on how the family would react to the discovery of a body, she replied: "Mum will start crying and I don't know what to say to her. I can't say everything will be all right. To think about what someone could have done to her makes me physically sick."

Gemma and her sister, 13, were very close, often sleeping in the same room. They would swap notes on boys, she said, and planned to be each other's bridesmaids.

"Milly was really funny and intelligent, she was cool," she said. "She wore the clothes and talked the talk. The night before she disappeared she was talking about a Pop Idol concert she'd been to. She said, 'Night night, Gemma, I love you.' She said that every night before she went to sleep. She said it to Mum and Dad too – in case anything happened."

Gemma was watching television on the afternoon Milly disappeared. "Mum came into the room and asked where Milly was," she recalled. "I said she must be at a friend's house. Dad came in about 5pm and said 'Gemma, where's Milly? She was supposed to be home at 4.15.' He said he was going out to check for her.

"I sent Milly a text message saying she'd better get home. I said Dad was really annoyed with her. Dad drove all the way past the station to see if she was there but there was no sign of her. I rang some of her friends but no one had heard anything. That's when I thought she'd been abducted.

"That was the worst night. It was really awful. Mum kept going out to the front of the house, pacing up and down the street, looking for her."

After Milly's disappearance Gemma stopped sleeping or would suffer nightmares. Her mother started to share her room and she was prescribed sleeping tablets.

Gemma was questioned by police: "They asked about boyfriends and what Milly did socially. It was quite hard because she had told me stuff in confidence. They asked me things about Mum and Dad [such as] did they ever have an argument with Milly?

"I got quite annoyed. Mum explained the police might think Dad was a suspect. They searched our whole house, which was horrible. There was nothing left that Milly had been the last one to touch."

Unable to concentrate on her GCSEs, Gemma was given eight passes based on her course work and mock results. She is now studying travel and tourism at college.

"I just think I'm going to enjoy myself twice as much – for me and Milly," she said. "It's like Milly is there as well."