A MUM of two has had to cancel Christmas and birthdays after her employer mysteriously disappeared.

Staff members of High Street News, which has operated in Prestatyn for more than 25 years, have been left without jobs after manager Ewan Walden allegedly fled.

Trish Hunt, who had worked for the shop for 14 months, responded: “It’s been a very big shock. The last time I saw Ewan he told me to enjoy my week’s holiday and that he would pay me my wages when I came back, only to come back to this big mess.

“We’ve all been left in the lurch, I'm stuck trying to find a new job while both of my children are going to miss out on their birthdays in December which are not going to happen this year, along with Christmas.”

The business, which employs 12 including eight young people on its paper round, had been managed by Mr Walden for 15 months.

Miss Hunt's colleague Joanne Moore first became aware of the situation on Tuesday, October 23, after one of Mrs Hunt’s colleagues opened the shop to discover the till floats missing and the cigarette counter empty.

Miss Hunt added: “When Jo closed up on Monday everything was fine. When she went back in on Tuesday morning, there was no note, just two sets of keys posted through the door, no float and the cigarettes had been raided.

“She went up to the bungalow he was renting in town to tell him what had happened, but it was completely empty.

“There’s no justification for what he’s done.

“Customers had been asking the shop was closing down for months because he wasn’t ordering new stock and he’d always get irate with them and tell them it was fine. He’d even cancelled the lottery machine weeks ago, and told us to tell customers it was broken.

“But to not have the decency to tell all of us and all of the elderly customers who rely on him for their papers that he was struggling and that he’d have to give us our notice is disgusting.”

Rhiannon Beaumont Bullock, a paper girl aged 16, said: "I was very shocked and upset about what had happened, I felt very sorry for all the customers the shop.

It was so unexpected for this to happen i know the shop was going down hill. But the do owe us wages now and its very hard for the main staff as they need the money more than anyone else."

Staff are currently seeking to find out from the premises' landlord if there are any plans to replace management at the shop.