Madeleine
McCann's parents tell of moments of optimism and the fear they might never be
able to return to their family home
The imposing red-brick home, in an exclusive cul-de-sac in the Leicestershire
village of Rothley, lies empty now. The grass is kept cut by neighbours. The
kitchen table is piled high with unread letters from wellwishers around the
world. One of them is addressed simply: 'To Madeleine, the little girl
missing.'
The window shades in 'The Orchard' - home to four-year-old Madeleine McCann,
her two-year-old twin siblings Sean and Amelie, and parents Gerry and Kate -
are drawn. All but one. It reveals a ground-floor windowsill brimming with
cuddly toys, awaiting the return of a little beaming, blonde girl snatched from
her bed on a family holiday in Portugal 100 days ago on Saturday.
With the approach next weekend of that latest painful milestone, Kate has
spoken for the first time of the final few hours before her daughter's
kidnapping on the evening of 3 May in the holiday resort of Praia da Luz.
'Mummy,' she recalled Madeleine's bedtime words in a choked near-whisper, 'I've
had the best day ever! I'm having lots and lots of fun!' Barely two hours
later, Kate returned from dinner with friends at a tapas restaurant about 100
yards from their holiday flat to discover that Madeleine was gone. 'I was
screaming her name,' Kate recalled. It was just total fear... panic and fear.'
The initial jolt may have passed. But in two very different villages, one a few
miles outside Leicester in the Midlands and the other on the sun-scorched
Algarve coast, the painful sense of Madeleine's absence was powerfully in
evidence last week.
Rothley's main square, centring on a gated war memorial, seemed strangely quiet
- and empty. In the days following Madeleine's disappearance, the landlady at
the pub opposite, the Royal Oak,
caught the villagers' mood perfectly and organised a display of dozens of yellow
ribbons around the five tall trees which encircle the tiny park.
In the weeks that followed, the dozens grew to hundreds. Wellwishers - first
from the village, then from Leicester and London,
and finally from all over the world - descended to add their handwritten
messages of support. Dozens of cuddly toys soon covered the pavement and the
benches.
Yet the weeks have since stretched on without any sign of Madeleine's return.
Heavy recent rains left the toys limp and waterlogged. And some villagers became
increasingly alarmed over what last Friday's Leicester Mercury, the local
newspaper, dubbed 'grief tourists'.
With Gerry signalling his support, a decision was taken to find a more low-key
way of demonstrating Rothley's shared sadness over the McCanns' ordeal. The
toys have been washed, packaged and donated to children's charities.
A single symbolic yellow-and-green ribbon now adorns each of the trees around
the park. A small candle in Madeleine's honour burns in front of the memorial.
Still, in The Crescent, the quiet road a mile away which has been home to the
McCanns for the past year and a half, the sense of private loss still clearly
runs deep. 'We so miss the hoots and hollers of joy from the kids and Kate and
Gerry when the weather was nice,' remarked Brian Davinson, a retired local
businessman who with his wife Jane are the family's nearest neighbours. 'I
still remember,' he said smiling, 'Gerry, with his commanding voice, assembling
the big swing-set that is in the back garden. It feels so strange without them
here.'
More than 1,100 miles away, on the Portuguese coast, Kate confided last week:
'I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to go back into our family home. I can't
bear the thought of it... We have so many happy memories in that house.' Then,
after a pause, she added: 'Madeleine's room is shocking pink! She chose the
colour.'
It seemed a rare admission - away from the relentlessly 'positive' focus that
she and Gerry have sought to bring to the worldwide campaign to bring Madeleine
home - that the worst may have happened to her daughter.
'I still have moments of panic and fear,' Kate said, holding back tears. 'It's
not as intense and unrelenting as the first five days. Now, obviously, we have
hope - and it's important to hold on to that.' Doing so cannot have been easy.
In the weeks since Madeleine's disappearance, Portugal's largest-ever police
investigation - backed by forces throughout Europe, North Africa and beyond -
has thrown up repeated leads that have turned into dead-ends, 'sightings' that
were later dismissed, hopes raised and then dashed.
The most recent, last week, came in Belgium. A children's therapist
told police she was '100 per cent sure' she had seen the missing girl sitting
at a restaurant table with an English-speaking woman and a Dutch man in a small
town near Maastricht.
Local police have said that they are treating the sighting 'very seriously'.
In Portugal,
the response was more circumspect. One senior detective working on the case
said: 'Of course, we hope it is for real. But there have been so many reports
like this.' The man in charge of the investigation, Inspector Olegario Sousa,
was non-committal, but slightly more upbeat. The key, he said, would be in the
DNA tests Belgian labs were doing on a bottle from which the little girl was
sipping a soft drink - expected in the next few days.
There has been only one public sign of a possible breakthrough. It came less
than two weeks after Madeleine went missing, and it involved the 33-year-old
son of one of the leading lights in Praia da Luz's closely knit British
expatriate community. Robert Murat lives with his mother, Jenny, barely 50
yards down the road from the McCanns' holiday flat and had been pitching in as
a translator in the Portuguese police's questioning of witnesses.
On 15 May, he was formally declared an arguido, or formal suspect - a status he
retains under Portuguese law throughout the investigation until he is either
released or charged. Though he has been questioned several times since,
detectives said privately last week there was still no forensic evidence
linking him to Madeleine's disappearance and no 'imminent' sign of whether he
would eventually be charged. Kate and Gerry, meanwhile, have signalled their
determination to continue to keep their daughter's plight in the public eye.
They travelled to Spain last week to help distribute a new series of posters in
the hope that local residents and the summer influx of tourists might provide
what Gerry recently called the 'one phone call' that might bring their daughter
back home safely.
For Kate, who has made only a few brief trips away from Praia da Luz since
Madeleine's disappearance, the main focus has been on caring for the twins.
'They know she's not there, and they do miss her,' Kate said, confiding last
week that at times a passing comment from Sean or Amelie about their missing
sister 'catches me in the throat'.
Recalling her first visit back to Britain since the kidnapping, for a
family christening in mid-July, she recalled boarding the plane with the twins.
'There was an empty seat on the plane and Sean said: "That's Madeleine's
seat."'
Amelie, she added, will occasionally make a sudden reference to Cuddle Cat -
the pink soft toy, Madeleine's favourite, which Kate now keeps almost constantly
at her side. 'Amelie will point at Cuddle Cat and say: "Madeleine. Her
Cuddle Cat. Looking after it." She's probably heard me saying that.'
Gerry, for his part, has been concentrating on explaining and expanding
awareness of the 'Madeleine campaign' worldwide - most recently at the White
House, where he met aides of the First Lady, Laura Bush. 'Gerry's way of coping
is to keep busy and focused,' Kate reflected. 'He's a very optimistic, positive
person.'
Alan Pike, brought in by Mark Warner from the Yorkshire-based Centre for Crisis
Psychology to help the McCanns within days of Madeleine's disappearance, said
last week that he was heartened by how well both Gerry and Kate were coping.
Yet even Gerry, he said, 'like most people who go through an abduction, find
that positive thinking is something very, very difficult to sustain 24/7.' The
forthcoming 100-day 'anniversary,' he added, would be particularly difficult
for both parents. Any such milestone 'gives rise to a lot of the physical
reactions associated with the early days - the shock, the feelings of anger and
the helplessness and, in this case, a lot of the feelings of guilt'.
He said: 'The hope is what keeps them going... But there are still those bad
days - what Gerry has referred to as the dark places - and they are not
pleasant.'
The search
3 May:
Madeleine McCann disappears just days short of her fourth
birthday
11 May:
Businessman Stephen Winyard offers a £1m reward for
information
15 May:
Briton Robert Murat is named as an arguido, or formal
suspect
30 May:
Gerry and Kate McCann travel to the Vatican to meet the Pope
12 June:
The McCanns visit Morocco following a possible sighting
15 June:
Police search a field nine miles from Praia da Luz but find
nothing
29 June:
A couple are arrested for trying to extort money from the
McCanns, falsely claiming to know where she is.
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