THE best friend of Claudia Lawrence has said she still dreams about the missing chef, ten years after she disappeared.

Suzy Cooper, 54, was speaking at an event at York Minster to mark the 10-year anniversary of her friend’s disappearance.

Ms Cooper, who was the first person to realise Miss Lawrence was missing, said it was “surreal” to think she had been gone for such a long time.

She said she still thinks about her friend a lot and dreams about her frequently, adding: “I don’t want to wake up because I feel like I am back in my old world, and that world was nice and comfortable, and the world I’m in now isn’t.

“I think those dreams are my way of getting some comfort. I like to have them. I always wake up thinking I’ve been with Claudia.”

Ms Cooper said she had an “intensive” friendship with Miss Lawrence and described her disappearance as “all very surreal”.

She said: “In those first few days we thought it would be over in a few days. It’s just unbelievable, really. You can’t quite comprehend the fact that it’s been ten years. It’s been a long ten years but it also seems like only yesterday.”

Ms Cooper said she believes Miss Lawrence went missing on the morning of March 19 but she has “no idea” what happened to her friend, and feels frustrated at the lack of answers.

She said: “In this day and age I find it really hard to believe that someone can go missing for ten years with not one clue. Not one piece of evidence. Nothing. How is that even possible now?”

Ms Cooper said she believed her friend would not have changed much in the last ten years.

She said: “At the moment I like to think of her how I remember her. I don’t want to think of her any different to that.”

Miss Lawrence’s former housemate Jen King, 34, said she thinks about her friend every day and will never forget her.

She said: “For as long as I’m alive, she’s alive in some way, because I will never stop thinking about her.”

She said they became “firm friends” when Miss Lawrence offered her a room in her house after she broke up with her boyfriend.

She described Miss Lawrence as a kind and loyal friend and said she was “petrified” when she realised she was missing.

She said: “I couldn’t believe that something could happen to someone so good. She wasn’t a saint, she was just a person, but she was my friend, she was our friend.”

Ms King appealed to anyone with information to come forward.

She added: “Here we are a decade later and still no closer.

“You still have to have hope and I hope that someone will come forward with that piece of information that we need to draw this to whatever resolution it’s going to come to.

“Just do the right thing. I just want to know where my friend is.”