A STUDENT who disappeared on New Year’s Eve sent two desperate text messages to her friends begging them for help minutes after getting into a stranger’s car.

Sally Geeson, 22, who was studying forensic science at Anglia Polytechnic university in Cambridge, sent the first message at 1.40am to her house mate saying: “No one waited for me, I have got into a car with someone, please call me.”

Two minutes later she sent another text to a male friend saying: “Please help me X.”

Ms Geeson’s friends fear that she was abducted after getting into a bogus taxi and was not able to talk openly so had to alert friends by text.

Janet O’Dea, 22, who has lived with Ms Geeson for three years, said: “I think she must have got into a car thinking it was a minicab and when she realised it was someone dodgy she couldn’t call me so sent a text instead. It is not like her just to get into someone’s car.”

Ms O’Dea did not get the message until 9.15am, when she woke up on New Year’s Day, and she repeatedly tried to call her friend without success. “When I called her it just rang and then went to answer machine,” she said. “I think that she has been abducted; she is not the sort of girl who would go off and not contact her friends or family, especially her Mum or her twin sister.”

The second text message was sent to Andrew Webber, 24, a former flatmate. He did not see it until 11am.

Sue Geeson, Sally’s mother, last saw her on December 29, when she drove her back to Cambridge. Mrs Geeson, 46, said: “It’s not like Sally to disappear, it’s really out of character. She’s a twin and would talk to her sister every day and call us three or four times a week.”

Ms Geeson had been at The Avery pub in Brookfields, Cambridge. At about 1am she and a friend went to a chip shop but she returned to the pub alone when a fight started. A doorman at the pub remembers her returning and Emily Prior, 20, a housemate, said that she said goodbye to Ms Geeson after 1am. “I gave her a hug and she said: ‘Don’t go to bed before I am home.’ We waited until 4am but thought she had gone to a friend’s. She was happy, drunk but not smashed. She knew what she was doing. It was when we woke up and read the messages that we worried.”

Detective Superintendent Garry Swain said: “We know she sent two text messages and another one to a friend saying: ‘Hi Em, it’s me, I’m lost.’ But we don’t know when this was sent.” Mr Swain said that Ms Geeson’s mobile phone, a Nokia 8210, had been powered down at 9.44am. “We don’t know if it was switched off, broken down or if the battery had gone flat.” Experts say that the networks were so busy that the signal may have been diverted to a different cell site.

Officers plan to check her bank accounts and CCTV footage from around the pub. They are also following up a sighting of a “distressed” woman fitting Ms Geeson’s description on a train travelling to Sheringham on the Norfolk coast on Monday. Ms Geeson was wearing a brown knee-length dress with matching shoes, big silver earrings and a beige jacket.

• A girl who failed to come home after New Year’s Eve was found safe and well yesterday in Surrey. Amie Gregory, 18, had last been seen at 4.30am on Saturday at Kudos nightclub inAshford, Kent.

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