Where IS Arthur? Heartbroken parents of grammar school boy, 15, who ran away from home after saying he was 'bored' of his life reveal their anguish 

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Missing: Schoolboy Arthur Heeler-Frood, 15

Caroline Heeler-Frood is beside herself. More than nine weeks ago — 68 days, to be precise — she said a cheery goodbye to her 15-year-old son, Arthur, as he headed off on his bike to school. And nobody has seen hide nor hair of him since.

Instead, a handwritten letter arrived in the post the following day at the family's picture postcard farmhouse near Axminster, Devon: 'To Mum and Dad' it read. 

'I have run away because I am bored of my life. Please don't try to find me or make me come home. I don't know how long I will be away for, but it won't be any longer than a year.

'You will find my school uniform in a bin bag in a small barn in the field on the green, down the road from Membury church. My bike is chained to the fence, there is a spare key to the lock on the window.

'Please can you apologise to the restaurant and tell them that I will no longer be able to work there.'

He ended the letter with: 'I know you will be upset, but understand I have to do this. From Arthur.'

Distraught: Arthur's parents Caroline and Jeremy last saw their son more than nine weeks ago

Close family: Arthur on holiday with his sister with his sister Hester, 18, and brother Reuben 

Last contact: Arthur sent a postcard to his parents telling them he had run away from home

Upset? Caroline has literally sobbed buckets. She's in tears now as she gives her first major interview since her beloved son disappeared on Tuesday, September 6. It will be exactly ten weeks this coming Tuesday since she saw her boy.

The teenager was last sighted at 7.30am when he set off on his bike from his home to travel the seven miles to Colyton Grammar School, one of the country's top State schools, where he was performing to an excellent standard and had taken his exams a year early.

Yet, that fateful morning he never arrived at the East Devon school. His parents subsequently received the letter no parent would want to receive from Arthur instructing them as to the wherabouts of his bike and school uniform.

Arthur's clothing and bike were found exactly where he said they'd be — but since then there have been no sightings of him.

His mother would give anything to know that someone, somewhere, had seen him alive and well in the intervening period. Meanwhile, she has barely eaten or slept.

'I keep going over and over everything in my mind,' she says. 'Every single thing he said or did before he left that day. There's one thing that sticks in my mind. Normally, when he went off to school, he'd just say, "bye" and be off. That Tuesday he stood on the doorstep and said to me, "don't worry mum. I've got my fluorescent . . ." She stops. Wipes her eyes.

Appeal: Caroline and Jeremy are desperate to know whether Arthur, pictured, is safe and well

Bright: Arthur had just started his A-levels at Colyton, one of the UK's best-performing schools

'I always used to nag him about wearing a fluorescent vest when he was on his bike. I think he was saying: "Don't worry, Mum, I'll be all right." 

'I just feel so desperate. In the morning I have to put the radio on as soon as I wake up to stop his disappearance going round and round in my head.

'I try to do something — anything — to keep busy. Stop thinking about the worst. But, of course, you do think. The thing that worries me more than anything is the idea of him struggling somewhere and we can't do anything.'

Again, she's overwhelmed by tears.

'I just feel: "How could this have happened to us?" It feels so surreal.' Her husband Jeremy, a solid, reassuring figure, reaches across the kitchen table to comfort her.

Lonely: Arthur said his life was 'boring'

'It happens to a lot of people,' he says. 'Kids run away every day.'

She turns to him, red-eyed, chin trembling: 'But you never think we're one of those families,' she says. 'You think: "We're normal." And this is so out of character for Arthur. He's such a mature child.'

Arthur is certainly a high achiever, with 12 GCSEs at A* and A grades. He'd just started his first day of A-level work at Colyton, one of the UK's best-performing schools, studying English, Politics, Maths and Physics.

'On the Monday I was driving him to school because he'd had an appointment at the orthodontist,' says Caroline.

'He did that classic teenage thing of putting his music on and kind of shutting down,' she says. 'It was a 45-minute car journey. I was tying to engage him in conversation, but he said: "Mum, I don't want to talk. I'm listening to my music." She shakes her head and asks plaintively: "How can this be happening?" 

'How' and 'why' are words that punctuate this highly emotional interview. The Heeler-Froods, you see, had provided all three of their children, including Reuben, 20, and Hester, 18, with a textbook childhood that included closely monitored screen time and meals each night around the table in their warm farmhouse kitchen.

Caroline, an award-winning painter, and Jeremy, a cabinet maker, both believed they were doing the best they possibly could for their children.

Yet for Arthur, it seems, it was a lonely life, particularly once his sister — to whom he was extremely close — left for university. She, too, is distraught about the potential fate of her brother and has launched a Facebook campaign to help find him.

Desperate: The Heeler-Froods appeared on This Morning on ITV to appeal for information

Jeremy says: 'Arthur didn't run away from home like a lot of kids because they're in a really bad place. That wasn't the case for him. It was more he had . . .' He stops and corrects himself. 'He has a zest for life.'

This is not the first time Caroline and Jeremy have lapsed unwittingly into the past tense when they speak about their son. Do they ever fear the unthinkable?

'You can't escape that,' says Caroline. 'It haunts you all the time.'

Before he disappeared, Arthur had been reading George Orwell's Down And Out In Paris And London. He was also a fan of the Jason Bourne movies, in which the protagonist takes on a new identity.

And the family has since discovered that, the night before he left home, Arthur was on his Facebook account and may have been in contact with an unknown person. They and the police have pleaded with the social network company to release this information but, to date, Facebook has refused.  

Prepared: Arthur took £350 with him

Caroline is at pains to explain why she believes this Facebook link is so vital.

'Arthur left without his passport or his phone and only £350,' says Caroline. 'Normally, kids are tracked in 45 hours either by their phone or on CCTV, but what's extraordinary is it's now been nine-and-a-half weeks and there's been no contact from him at all. No sightings. No CCTV footage. We visited towns along the South Coast, we've been to Manchester, Liverpool, London.

'We've contacted homeless organisations, coach stations, hospitals, train stations — anywhere we can think of to put up posters, but we've heard nothing.

'That's why this Facebook link is so crucial. We just need them to release information to the police so they can see if he's been in contact with someone.'

Caroline is clearly desperate. She has lost half a stone in the past two months and is haunted by what she now believes to be her son's loneliness.

After going over and over everything, she believes he was particularly vulnerable to internet influences.

'He was on his own a lot,' she says. 'We're very remote here so, at the beginning of the summer, he told me he didn't think he'd be socialising much. His group of friends at school had changed that year. Things had broken up and he didn't have anyone he was particularly close to.

'I tried to talk to him about it. When I said I was concerned about his social life, he said: "Oh, Mum." I asked if school was an issue, but he said he didn't want to change schools. He went to a couple of parties at the beginning of the summer, but felt there was nobody he could hang out with.

'It's difficult now to know exactly what was going on in his mind, but he was spending a lot of time alone in his room on his smartphone.

Proud: The parents did everything they could to give their children the best start in life

'He used to say he thought we were eccentric because we didn't have Xboxes and things in the house and used to try to monitor his screen time. All his peers are into their electronic games. He certainly wasn't looking forward to being stuck at home with us once his sister went to university.'

But they feel they did all they could to make sure all three children are educated and articulate.

She recalls how the night before Arthur disappeared, they'd sat with him watching a documentary commemorating The Great Fire of London. 'They were burning a wooden structure on the Thames and Arthur thought it was wrong given so many people lost their lives. There was nothing different — no indication. We had a normal supper — everything was normal.'

Jeremy interrupts. 'Arthur wasn't very physically affectionate,' he says. 'He was as a child, not as a teenager. He did used to do this thing, though, where he'd come up behind me and lean on my shoulders. He did do it the night before he left. I thought, "that's nice" because he hadn't done it for a while.'

Secrets: Arthur is understood to have been in contact with someone on Facebook

Indeed, so 'normal' was family life at the Heeler-Froods's remote farmhouse that neither parent realised anything was wrong until Arthur failed to return home from school at his usual 5pm.

'When he wasn't back by 6pm I began to worry,' says Caroline. 'He was always diligent about ringing. I knew he'd left his phone at home, but thought he'd borrow someone else's if something had happened.'

Caroline drove to the post office in the village where Arthur usually cycled to catch the school bus, but there was no sign of his bicycle. They called the school only to learn he hadn't attended that day. 'You're terrified,' says Jeremy. 'Until we got that letter the following day we thought he'd been knocked off his bike and was lying in a ditch or had been abducted.

'There's a shortcut he could have taken if he'd decided to ride his bike to school which is a mile off the road. I was running along there in the dark looking either side trying to see if there was a body in the ditch.'

They both fell into bed exhausted at 2am, but understandably there was little sleep. 'We were exhausted,' says Jeremy. 'But every time you drop off, your body wakes you up with this alarm of panic.'

The following day they continued to scour the streets and the police searched their house from top to bottom. Arthur seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.

'After we'd been driving around I remember coming in and seeing a pile of post that had arrived earlier,' says Jeremy. 'I was shuffling through it and remember staring at one without really seeing it. I had this feeling it was important then realised it has his handwriting.

Jeremy says: 'That was such a relief. We knew then he hadn't been abducted. I think he was trying to minimise the problems for us. He was trying to say: "I'm really organised. I know what I'm doing. I've got this sorted out."

Caroline nods: 'I'd bought him two school shirts for school. He'd worn one that day. The other one he left on his desk in the Cellophane with the receipt on top for me to return to the shop. He was thinking of us.'

This praise for her son is despite the fact he has put his parents through hell. Caroline keeps talking. She says washing his clothes tears her in two and she has to steel herself to go into his bedroom.

'You think you know your children,' she says. 'But I don't think I do. This has been really . . . sort of . . .' she struggles for the right words.

'I don't understand it. You can piece together things that make a certain kind of logic — things like his older brother going on a gap year and having an adventure and him wanting to have that.

'The fact is his schooling is a year ahead so he probably thought he had a year in hand to go off and have his own adventure and do his A-levels, and also that Hester was leaving for university. He wasn't looking forward to being at home on his own with us.' She purses her lips and tries not to cry.

'When we read his letter we honestly thought he'd be back in a week but it's almost ten weeks now…

'People have asked: "Are you angry with him?" But I can't feel angry. I just feel so desperate to get him home. I'm sure at some point I will be angry with him for what he's put us through, but whatever's happened, if he comes home we can work it out — somehow.

'If he wants to change his schooling we can, whatever he wants, I don't care. I just want him to be alive and I want him home.'