IT WAS 15 years ago today that two Midland schoolboys left their homes to visit a relative nearby.

It was a journey that should have taken minutes – but they never arrived.

Today, on the anniversary of Patrick Warren and David Spencer’s disappearance from their Chelmsley Wood homes, Patrick’s older brother Derek has spoken to the Birmingham Mail of his family’s decade and a half of anguish.

Patrick, then aged 11, and David, who was 13, had told their mums they were going out to visit one of Patrick’s brothers, who lived nearby, on Boxing Day 1996. It was the last their families ever saw or heard from them.

Derek was one of the first people to go out looking for the young boys when they failed to arrive at their other brother’s home.

Today the 36-year-old still has no idea what happened to his brother and no-one has ever faced charges for the boys’ disappearance.

Speaking to the Birmingham Mail with his partner, Ellie Roe, who is pregnant with their sixth child, Derek said: “Everyone expects to be happy on Christmas Day. I think: what’s there really to look forward to? My brother went missing on Boxing Day.

“I really don’t like Christmas.”

Ellie, aged 31, described Patrick’s disappearance as a “family horror story” that makes her panic when her own children go out.

“Memories and questions,” she said, “that’s all you’re left with.”