Officers have found 45-year-old’s phone and say they are ‘extremely concerned’ after she went missing on Friday

The partner of a woman who went missing three days ago has described her disappearance as “perpetual hell” and said she has “two little girls that need their mummy home”.

Police said they were “extremely concerned” for Nicola Bulley, 45, who went missing shortly after taking her two daughters to their primary school near a quiet Lancashire village on Friday morning.

She was last seen walking her brown-coloured spaniel on their usual route along the river in St Michael’s on Wyre, detectives said.

As the search for Bulley continued on Monday, police revealed that she had been on a conference call with other people and had placed her phone on a bench, where it was found after she had been reported missing. Her dog, Willow, was found about an hour later.

Bulley’s partner, Paul Ansell, said he had spent all of Sunday searching for the mother of two. He added: “It is just perpetual hell. It is just utter disbelief. We are living through this but it doesn’t feel real.

“All we can say is we need to find her. She’s got two little girls that need their mummy home. We have got to get some good news now.”

Ansell said he or his partner, known as Nikki, would take the children, aged nine and six, to a local primary school before taking Willow for a walk along the river nearby.

Supt Sally Riley, from Lancashire constabulary, said officers were keeping an “open mind” as to her whereabouts but that it was likely she had gone missing rather than having been the victim of a crime.

However, Riley added: “People do go missing but clearly as time goes on we do become more and more concerned for Nicola. But we’re very much hoping that we will find something to try to bring her home safe and well soon.”

A police helicopter hovered above the village of St Michael’s on Wyre on Monday, where dozens of volunteers spent the weekend searching for the missing woman.

Underwater search teams have also been drafted in, alongside search dogs, mountain rescuers, drones and other resources.

Riley said Bulley was last seen by a member of the public at 9.15am on Friday and that her family raised the alarm later that day.

She said Bulley’s phone was “in use at the time she went missing”. The fact it was found on a bench “doesn’t raise our suspicions at all” about the circumstances of her disappearance, Riley added.

Police said Bulley, known to her friends as Nikki, spoke with an Essex accent. She was last seen wearing a long black gilet jacket with a hood, black jeans and olive green ankle wellies. Her hair was tied into a ponytail.

Bulley, a mortgage adviser, lives with her partner and two young daughters about a 10-minute drive away from where she went missing, in Inskip, between Preston and Blackpool. Police said she also had links to St Michael’s, where she was last seen, and Thornton-Cleveleys in Blackpool.

Police said the search would continue into this week.