Madeleine (41 page)

As Clarence relayed his conversation with the journalist, I could feel my anger and frustration building. Not again! How many of these leaks would we have to bear before this whole nightmare was over? Needless to say, before long Clarence was besieged by calls from the media, all of them asking about this ‘breaking story’. We could see what was going to happen. The news of our efforts in Brussels would be spiked and replaced by ‘MADELEINE LEFT ALONE TO CRY’ or whatever attention-grabbing headline took the fancy of the sub-editors.

I don’t remember many occasions when I’ve been as angry as I was that day. The Portuguese police – both those currently and previously involved in the inquiry – had had our statements for eleven and a half months. How had this information come to be released – completely illegally, I might add, at the risk of sounding like a cracked record – today of all days, when Gerry and I were in Brussels trying to do something positive for child protection? The effect it would have was obvious: it would discredit Gerry and me and detract from what we were trying to achieve. We were gutted.

If you think I’m being paranoid, think on this. In a meeting seven weeks after Madeleine was taken, Guilhermino Encarnação had tried to reassure us that the PJ were not trying to portray us in a negative light. ‘If we really wanted to do that,’ he said, ‘we’d release the comment Madeleine made to you on the day she disappeared.’ Bingo.

As we’d feared, the day’s McCann story changed and the media ran with the leaks from our statements.

We were determined not to let our frustration at this injustice get to us. On our return from Brussels, we started to lobby all of the 785 MEPs, urging them to sign the declaration. Just adding your name to a bit of paper sounds so easy, but it does require the signatory to make the time and effort to attend the official signing in person. We are all afflicted by apathy at times, and that goes for politicians too – maybe even more than for the rest of us. And so we pushed – along with friends, family, supporters, the charity Missing People, Missing Children Europe, Catherine Meyer and the five MEPs who had sponsored our declaration – making the journey to the European Parliament in Strasbourg that June to give the campaign, and the MEPs, one final nudge. By September we’d achieved our goal. We had 418 MEPs’ names on our declaration and it was formally adopted as a resolution by the European Parliament.

We were relieved and delighted. We knew that this was no more than one small step in achieving our aim, but it had been a shot in the arm of the frustratingly slow bureaucratic process and brought child abduction to the forefront of the minds of those who were actually able to do something about it. Let’s hope it stays there.

20

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE MAD

At 1am on Wednesday, 27 February 2008, Gerry and I were woken suddenly from our sleep. The room appeared to be shaking and a photograph of Madeleine toppled over on my chest of drawers. We were terrified. Our immediate thought was that somebody was trying to kill us. Maybe a bomb had gone off, or perhaps a gang was trying to break into our house. Gerry got out of bed and went to check on Sean and Amelie before having a good look around, inside and out. I prayed for our safety.

With the occasional death threat turning up in our morning mail, it is perhaps not surprising that our first instinct was to think we were being attacked. When we began to calm down, we realized that in all probability it had been an earth tremor. I started to cry as we hugged each other, fear and then relief giving way to a deep sadness at what our life had become.

As we waited for the Portuguese judicial procedure to run its course, we felt completely out on a limb. Since August, when the PJ had begun to turn against us, we had been very disappointed with the attitude of the British authorities. Contact with us reduced to a trickle and little, if any information was shared with us. After we were made
arguidos
the situation deteriorated further. The UK police would argue that their hands were tied: the Portuguese might have perceived any ‘interference’ as an attempt to undermine their primacy in the investigation, which would have had implications not only for the current inquiry but also for any future international cooperation. We were aware of the frustrating constraints of this delicate relationship, but to us, it just felt like a betrayal.

The most difficult thing for us has been that we know the British police considered aspects of the investigation to be substandard and we honestly don’t think they believed we were involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. Comments made to us privately by several officers (including the most senior ones) confirmed this, but did nothing to prevent us from feeling we’d been hung out to dry when radio silence was maintained in public.

It is exasperating, too, that while we know the UK police are well aware of the selective leaks to the media, and what they seem designed to achieve, they still insist they have a cooperative relationship with the PJ. These leaks have included confidential statements taken by officers in Britain and supplied to the Portuguese police – and in some cases, the breaching of that confidence has caused immense damage to people other than ourselves.

It all makes this ‘cooperation’ look very one-sided. By declining to speak out about this kind of behaviour, which wouldn’t be tolerated in our country, they are conveying the impression of a tacit acceptance of it, even agreement with it.

In the spring of 2008 – almost a year after Madeleine was last seen – the PJ decided they wanted to conduct a re-enactment in Praia da Luz of the night of 3 May 2007. The participants required were Gerry, me, Fiona, Dave, Jane, Russ, Rachael, Matt, Dianne and Jes Wilkins, to whom Gerry chatted in the street that night just after his last glimpse of Madeleine. They weren’t interested in using actors or stand-ins. So either everyone agreed or the reconstruction wouldn’t go ahead.

Our understanding was that as
arguidos
, Gerry and I were obliged to attend. The other witnesses received reasonably friendly emails from the PJ, via the British police, inviting them to take part. They were a bit baffled and replied requesting more details about the purpose of this belated re-enactment. It seemed it would not be filmed, or at any rate, not for information-gathering through public broadcast. Our friends had watched, with increasing horror, what had happened to us. If they were suspicious that the PJ might be trying to use them to somehow strengthen a flimsy case against us, or even to implicate one of them, it would be understandable. There were worries, too, about the likelihood of a media furore blowing up around the whole thing, especially as the proposed dates had already been leaked to the newspapers. The biggest concern, though, for all the witnesses approached, was how a reenactment of the kind the PJ were proposing could actually help to find Madeleine. This question remained unanswered.

At that point the tone of the correspondence grew more brusque and what had seemed to be a request began to sound more like a summons. Some people decided they wanted to take legal advice before agreeing to anything. In the end there was no quorum and the plan was abandoned.

Meanwhile, the distressing landmarks kept coming. In May we faced the unthinkable: the first anniversary of Madeleine’s abduction. In the preceding days we gave a plethora of media interviews, and on 30 April an ITV documentary in which we participated was screened. Our aim was to relaunch the search for our daughter by appealing to the public directly for as much information as possible about her disappearance, including reports that had already been made to the authorities. As the UK police were simply passing on all leads they received to the PJ without sharing anything with us or our independent investigators – which, sadly, remains the case today – there were huge gaps in the puzzle we were desperate to fill. A dedicated phone line had been set up for this purpose, which people could call anonymously and confidentially.

As for the day itself, the prospect was so awful we didn’t know what we would want to do. My inclination was just to stay quietly in the house with Gerry, Sean and Amelie. Gerry, on the other hand, felt the need to be with other people. Johnny, Trish, Sandy and Michael were going to represent us in Praia da Luz at a service of hope for Madeleine at Nossa Senhora da Luz. At home there was to be a service in Rothley at the Parish Church of St Mary and St John, and a Mass at Our Lady of the Annunciation in Liverpool, where Gerry and I were married. In the end we attended both. Afterwards I was glad we did. It was a day for private anguish but probably not one on which we should have been on our own.

We asked all those who wished to remember Madeleine, and missing children everywhere, to light a candle and say a prayer at 9.15pm. All over Britain and beyond candles and lanterns were lit and torches shone heavenwards. Everton FC illuminated the night sky with their floodlights and Chinese lanterns were released in Rothley. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, wrote a special prayer for Madeleine and urged everyone to redouble their efforts to pray for her safe return.

9 May

Sean and Amelie have been a huge source of comfort to me. I have no idea how I could carry on if they weren’t here. How parents who have lost an only child continue, I do not know. Seany is a big soft ‘Mummy’s boy’ which is nice. He is very gentle and generally just lovely. Amelie is a real character but so sensitive and ‘in tune’ . . . She often says how much she likes you, Madeleine,‘my sister’, and what she’s going to give you of hers when you’re back. I heard her saying a prayer for you today, too.

Monday, 12 May 2008 was Madeleine’s fifth birthday. If I’d known on her fourth birthday that she wouldn’t be back with us for this one, either, I’m sure I’d have gone under. There is something to be said for living one day at a time. As we’ve continued to do since, we had a tea party at home, with balloons, cake, cards and presents, attended by family and friends and Madeleine’s best buddy, Sofia, whose birthday she shares. The presents go into Madeleine’s room to await her return. Her pink bedroom remains exactly as it was when she left it, but it’s a lot busier now. There are gifts people have sent – from teddy bears to rosary beads – and photographs and pictures Sean and Amelie have drawn for her pinned on the walls. She also has a keepsake box in which the twins leave little things for her: the last sweet in their packet, a new drawing, sometimes just a leaf that has taken their fancy! Everyone sits in there from time to time to feel close to her. The children sometimes borrow toys to play with for a while but they always return them for Madeleine.

The month of May, as well as Christmastime, always sees a surge of mail. There were periods in the first year when we had to go to the post office day after day to collect several crates of letters. The volume we have received over the past four years is absolutely staggering – and we still get a bundle almost every day. Thank God for the friends and relatives who help us with it. We sort the post into boxes labelled ‘Information/for follow-up’, ‘Well-wishers’, ‘Psychics/Dowsers/Visions’, ‘Nasty’ and ‘Nutty’. The ‘Well-wishers’ box is always by far the fullest, I’m glad to say. The ‘Nasty’ pile has never been huge, and it is rare nowadays for that box to be needed. The nonsensical letters destined for the ‘Nutty’ box, though, have arrived fairly consistently.

We have seen the best and the worst of mankind in our postbag as well as in our lives in general. Although we have experienced behaviour and attitudes so offensive and cruel that we would never have believed they existed, the goodness that lies within the vast majority of people has shone through it all.

The swell of solidarity from the general public in the immediate aftermath of Madeleine’s abduction was beyond anything that we could have ever imagined. Back in the UK, our parents, too, were kept afloat by a big cushion of love and support. I believe it saved us all from the abyss. When Gerry and I were made
arguidos
and castigated daily in the media, many people, not surprisingly, didn’t know what to think. A section of public opinion, especially in Portugal, certainly turned against us, though outside Portugal this contingent was not as big as the media suggested. We continued to receive hundreds of letters every week, most of them reassuring, and plenty of them criticizing the press and expressing their abhorrence of the conduct of the authorities towards us. So although many doors had been slammed in our faces, we never felt we were entirely on our own.

From children we’ve had prayers they’ve composed themselves or pictures they’ve drawn for Madeleine. We’ve had handwritten letters from people in their eighties and nineties which have touched us deeply. I feel honoured that these elderly people, with their wisdom and long experience of the vagaries of life, have taken the time to share their thoughts and good wishes with us. Mums have written, dads have written, people from all walks of life from all around the world. Before our lives changed in the way they did, I don’t think I’d ever considered writing to somebody I didn’t know in their hour of need. Having discovered how uplifting the encouraging words of a stranger can be, I have done this myself now on several occasions.

In the earliest days people sent or brought teddy bears to Rothley, which friends tied in their hundreds to the railings round the war memorial in the middle of the village. They stayed there for weeks and weeks, in the sun, wind and rain, all waiting for Madeleine to return. As autumn faded and still she wasn’t home, my aunt removed them and parents from Bishop Ellis and Rothley primary schools kindly took them home and washed and dried them. The regional director of the charity Samaritan’s Purse/Operation Christmas Child then arranged for the toys to be taken over to orphans in Belarus in time for Christmas. We were sent a little stack of photographs of these gorgeous children receiving Madeleine’s bears. The joy on their faces at having a single teddy of their own brought us to tears.