WHEN backpacker Nikki Hollis went missing in Stoke-on-Trent, friend Tom Logan knew he had to save her. Here is the moving story of how he finally brought her home.

When I heard Nikki was missing in Stoke I immediately assumed she was dead – mauled by dangerous dogs on a chav estate or literally bored to death by tedious accounts of the pottery industry.

I’d known her at school, and having been to Stoke-on-Trent once when I got lost on the way to Liverpool I knew I couldn’t leave her in a cursed wasteland of grotty pubs, ersatz Chinese takeaways and primitive tracksuited humans known as ‘Stokies’.

I took the first National Express coach to Hanley bus station and immediately began my search. At first I assumed the incessant shouts of ‘Ay up duck!’ were threats, but it turned out to be obs

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