Every day ‘brings a new agony’ for Alice’s parents

As a police hunt for the 14-year-old continues, Rosalind Hodgkiss and Jose Gross made a desperate renewed appeal for help in finding her.

Ms Hodgkiss, who is a teacher, said: “This has obviously been a very distressing time for the whole family and every morning as Alice’s disappearance grows longer and longer brings new agony, new anguish.

She added: “We’re making an appeal today to Alice, if she can hear us, that we want her to come home, that we miss her and love her.”

The couple spoke from the family home in west London, as police staged a reconstruction of the route that Alice was last seen walking four weeks ago. She was captured on CCTV at 4.26pm on August 28, walking along a towpath alongside the Grand Union Canal in west London, going under a bridge where Trumpers Way crosses the canal.

Her mother said: “We’re missing everything about her. We miss her smile, her presence, her quirkiness, every single thing about her we miss, and we want her back home where she belongs.”

Convicted murderer Arnis Zalkalns is the prime suspect in Alice’s disappearance, and Scotland Yard has come under fire for apparent delays in identifying him as a risk.