Madeleineby Kate McCann, Bantam Press, $35.
She loved Harry Potter,Dr Whoand her favourite toy Cuddle Cat, and when four-year-old Madeleine McCann was abducted on Thursday, May 3, 2007, in Portugal, the whole world knew who she was.
Ever since that day, her British doctor parents Kate and Gerry have fought to find her and clear their own names from suspicion.
All royalties from this book, written by Kate four years on, go to fund further investigation following the cessation of the police search.
Be warned, this is no easy read. It tells one mother’s living nightmare and any thoughts of family culpability are banished as you read Kate’s agonising descent into a living hell.
Why did they leave their children without a babysitter on the night of Madeleine’s disappearance from their holiday apartment? “We will bitterly regret it until the end of our days.”
Critical failure to follow up on a sighting of a man carrying a child that fateful night. “I have little doubt in my mind that was Madeleine’s abductor.”
Opening a dumpster bin on a search and praying her daughter was not inside. “The thought of Madeleine’s fear and pain tears me apart. The thought of paedophiles makes me want to rip my skin off,” Kate wrote in a diary she kept.
Answering baby twins Sean and Amelie who wanted to know where big sister “Magalin” was.
Allowing Amelie to kiss her big sister goodnight on the photograph in the locket Kate wears around her neck.
Finding saviours in the kindness of strangers, enemies in inexplicable hoaxers. “There is not a single aspect of our old life that has not been altered,” writes Kate.
The pain is so explicit throughout this book, it would make it easier if there had been evidence that Kate and Gerry were both arguido (accused), with the Portuguese police announcing them as “suspects”.
And perhaps therein lies the terrible untruth of those who willingly condemned them – it would have made our pain about the little blonde angel child’s disappearance less difficult to bear.
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