Terminally ill woman issues a plea to find her long-lost sister

A TERMINALLY ill woman is making an emotional plea for help to be reunited with her estranged sister, to whom she has not spoken for 30 years.

Anne Marsden, 75, inset, is living on borrowed time and wants to make amends with her younger sibling after what she says was “a silly argument” three decades ago.

Now Mrs Marsden, of Old Farnley, Leeds, wants to make contact and fulfil a promise she made to their late mother that she would “look after” her sister, who will now be aged 61.

But she says she has tried everything she can think of over the last five years in a bid to track down Elaine Hick – whose maiden name was Stead.

Mrs Marsden, of Bawn Approach, has a cyst on her stomach, has had heart failure twice and has been told by doctors there would be a 99 per cent chance she would die on the operating table if she had surgery. She said: “I have been poorly for 11 years but now I am very poorly. I haven’t got long and I can’t find her anywhere.” She said her sister was living in Hillside, Garforth, and was a hairdresser and also worked at a butcher’s shop in Garforth Main Street. However, she has since moved and may be living in Allerton Bywater. It is also possible that her sister, who has two daughters, Stacey and Gillian, and a son called Darren, remarried about 15 years ago and is known by a different surname.

Mrs Marsden said: “My son went to the house about two years ago but she wasn’t there. I have tried the library, the post office at Garforth and the police but they can’t help. I have tried everywhere I can think of but because I don’t know her surname I can’t check the electoral roll.”

In the time since the pair last spoke, their two older sisters – Joan and Pauline – have passed away but Mrs Hick was not at either funeral so it is unclear if she even knows they have died.

They also have a half-brother called Graham who still lives in York, where the family grew up.

Mrs Marsden, who was a cleaner, has a son aged 42 and is now a widow after her husband, former council worker Roy, died. She added: “I want to say sorry for what was said and I want her in my life for what life I have got left.”