Madeleine (23 page)

11

THE EUROPEAN CAMPAIGN

On we pressed with our campaign to spread the word across Europe. We had decided it would further our cause to visit one or two key countries ourselves and appeal personally to their people for help, seeking assistance and advice from politicians and children’s charities. We wanted to reach some of the hundreds of potential witnesses from elsewhere on the continent who had been on holiday in the Algarve around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance. Perhaps even more importantly, it was quite possible that Madeleine was in another country now. Had anyone noticed a little girl who seemed out of place, or somebody behaving suspiciously?

We chose Spain first, as it is so close to Portugal. After the British and Irish, most other visitors to the Algarve are German or Dutch, so we added Berlin and Amsterdam to the itinerary. Finally, we felt we needed to venture beyond Europe, to north Africa. Morocco was so easily accessible from Praia da Luz – ferries make the thirty-five-minute crossing from Tarifa in Spain to Tangiers several times a day – that there was a distinct possibility Madeleine could have been taken there. The Foreign Office helped us by arranging consular assistance in all these countries.

Now that it looked as if we were going to be based in Praia da Luz for the long haul, with frequent journeys to airports and regular meetings set up with the police at the British Consulate in Portimão, we’d decided it would be easier if we had our own car. We’d duly taken possession of a rented Renault Scenic on 27 May.

We left for Madrid on Thursday 31 May, taking a flight from Lisbon airport. Again it was horrible leaving Sean and Amelie. As well as the huge, central agony of missing and fearing for Madeleine, there were lots of other heartaches, and I resented being put in the position of having to make choices like this. I cursed the person who had brought such pain and suffering to our family. Our only comfort was that these essential separations seemed to affect Gerry and me far more than they did the twins.

At the check-in desks at Lisbon airport I looked around for pictures of Madeleine. I couldn’t see a single one. I was dismayed. I talked to one of the staff, who explained that there were some notices pinned up behind a few of the desks. The tears pricked my eyes yet again. This just wasn’t enough. Lisbon turned out to be one of the few European airports we visited that wasn’t plastered with Madeleine’s image. Poor Phil almost got herself arrested later for trying to rectify this by putting up some of our posters. The Portuguese, it seemed, took a less liberal view of flyposting than that encountered by our supporters elsewhere.

Sitting in an airport café, I couldn’t avoid casting my eyes over the people rushing for planes or pushing trolleys backwards and forwards aimlessly. Where were they all going? Did they not know a little girl had been stolen? How could they take a holiday, or a business trip to talk in meetings about projected sales figures, when Madeleine was missing? Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, I had an overwhelming urge to shout, ‘Stop!
Everybody
stop!
’ It’s so hard to accept that for everyone else life goes on, but of course it does.

We were met at Madrid airport by several British Embassy staff, a liaison officer and two press officers, as well as a crowd of journalists and photographers, and taken to the hotel where we were to spend the night. Clarence briefed Gerry and me about the meetings and press conferences arranged for the next day and then we went up to our room to get some rest.

A bit tearful again tonight. It’s getting harder to black out the bad thoughts.

After a troubled night, we got up, dressed and went down to breakfast. I couldn’t focus on the day ahead, on what we were trying to accomplish. Every now and then, by taking a few deep breaths and giving myself a firm talking-to, I gained a little control, only to collapse minutes later into a blubbering wreck. I was so angry with myself. Stop crying. Just stop it. You have to help your daughter. You will achieve nothing if you spend the whole day crying and wallowing in your grief. But trying to ‘snap out of it’ when every thought, every action, every breath is polluted by anguish is easier said than done. As I continued to sniffle over my untouched cup of tea, Gerry said, ‘Kate, you don’t have to do this. We don’t have to do any of this. These meetings can be cancelled quite easily.’ I knew he meant it but I also knew that I’d persecute myself later if I pulled out.

Once we’d been introduced to the British ambassador to Spain, the British consul for Madrid and a lady from the Justice and Home Affairs Department, we were scheduled to talk to representatives of three Spanish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with missing and exploited children. We’d both been a little nervous about this meeting. Conscious of the fact that there were many children abducted around the world whose plight hadn’t been given anything like the publicity Madeleine’s had, we were concerned that this might have caused some resentment.

We couldn’t have been more wrong. The reception we were given by the NGOs was nothing but appreciative. ‘Thank goodness you are doing this,’ they said. ‘We are so grateful to you for drawing attention to the whole issue of child abduction and exploitation.’ We listened for an hour while they explained to us the extent of the problem in Spain and the difficulties they faced. While the situation had improved slightly (possession of child pornography, for example, had finally been classified as a criminal offence in Spain a couple of years before – which it still has not, incidentally, in many other nations), they felt that many cases of child sexual abuse, pornography and trafficking were still being swept under the carpet. The authorities and even the general population seemed unwilling to acknowledge that this kind of thing happened in their country.

As empathetic as the NGO representatives were, with every horrendous fact and statistic they shared with us I became wobblier and wobblier. Afterwards I took refuge in the ladies’ room as the next deluge of tears gushed forth. Gripping the rim of the washbasin, I glanced at the red, swollen eyes and blotchy face looking back at me in the mirror. Come on, Kate. Deep breath in, deep breath out. And again. Nice and slow. Calm. Calm. I soaked some tissues in cold water and pressed them against my eyes and cheeks, then performed a few eye-widening exercises in an attempt to look vaguely human. Taking a final deep breath, with my mind refocused, I joined Gerry and Clarence and we made our way to the press conference that had been arranged, followed by a few short interviews.

In the afternoon we met Señor Rubalcaba, the Spanish interior minister. He listened attentively and his manner was gentle and sympathetic. He showed us the case file that had already been opened for Madeleine, which instantly brought us both some reassurance. There are two things I remember Señor Rubalcaba saying to us. ‘We are treating Madeleine as if she is one of our own,’ and ‘As time moves on, people forget. Please feel free to come and knock on my door at any point to remind me.’ Of course, I have no idea how genuine either statement was, but he certainly seemed sincere and we were grateful and encouraged.

As yet another day draws to a close and you are no nearer to finding your missing child, such fleeting flashes of optimism can disappear very quickly. That evening, as we flew back to Portugal, my mood was no doubt influenced by what we’d heard from the NGOs.

Quite upset on the way home. Can’t stop thinking about Madeleine again – her fear and her pain. Dark thoughts have been creeping in a lot this week. How can I carry on, knowing that her life may have ended like this?

Saturday 2 June. It wasn’t unusual for investigative or campaign issues to eat into our family days, and this was one of those occasions. Before we took the children out to Praia da Rocha beach, Gerry needed to catch up with the emails that had accumulated while we’d been in Madrid and I had a letter I wanted to write to J. K. Rowling. A couple of weeks earlier, a friend had mentioned to me that the author had a new Harry Potter story coming out in July and suggested I got in touch to see whether she could do something to raise awareness around the launch of her book.

‘July?’ I’d said. ‘
July?
’

Surely Madeleine would be back by then. I was panic-stricken at the idea that she might not; that my friend could imagine she might not. I simply couldn’t think this way. I needed Madeleine home tomorrow. But here I was, several weeks later, writing my letter to J. K. Rowling. How on earth had I survived this long? I wondered. It is quite staggering how much stress the human mind and body can endure and still function on some level. You simply can’t see how it is possible that you are still alive, and yet there you are, still breathing, speaking, moving. I clung tightly to the hope that whatever help J. K. Rowling might be able to offer in a month’s time, when it came to it, it wouldn’t be needed.

It wasn’t enough to prevent me from sliding down the slippery slope for the rest of the day.

Crying in bed again – can’t help it . . . The thought of Madeleine’s fear and pain tears me apart. The thought of paedophiles makes me want to rip my skin off. Surely these people along with psychopaths are
not
‘normal’ human beings? I’ve never been in favour of the death penalty but these people should be ‘kept’ in a secure location of some description. I don’t mind if it’s in nice surroundings but certainly, in the case of paedophiles, away at all times from ANY contact with children.

In the event, J. K. Rowling’s support was needed, and greatly appreciated. When
Harry Potter and the Deathly
H
a
llow
s
was published on 21 July, it was distributed with a new poster of Madeleine, which she asked all retailers to display.

It was the following evening, Sunday 3 June – exactly a month after Madeleine’s abduction – that Gerry and I opened up a little more to each other and shared some of the thoughts and anxieties that had been quietly tormenting us both; thoughts and anxieties that perhaps we hadn’t felt able or ready to voice up to now.

We’d been sitting alone at the table, working at our computers. It was quiet and the lights were low. Though I can’t remember how the conversation started, I’m glad it did. We talked through the guilt we felt about not having been in that apartment with the children; about having left the patio doors unlocked. How we found it hard to comprehend that we could have been so naive. We acknowledged the possibility that Madeleine might no longer be alive; the possibility that we might never find out what had happened to her. Would we ever be able to return to our home, the home we had all shared with her? Maybe we should move elsewhere. Where? We discussed the need we felt to do our utmost to prevent this from happening to another child; to prevent another family from having to go through what we were going through. We had to ensure that something positive for someone, even if it wasn’t us, came out of this horrific experience.

For me, the honest exposure of this buried poison was like lancing a boil. Admitting these secret fears and concerns, bringing them out into the open and sharing them with the only other person who was persecuted in the same way, made them suddenly a little easier to understand and to manage. Strengthened and comforted, I fell asleep that night more peacefully than I had in many days.

At the beginning of June, Gerry had a call from the director of communications at the Foreign Office. There was concern in the government, he said, that Clarence was ‘becoming the story’. I am not quite sure what he meant by this. Clarence was certainly a visible presence and perhaps his open, affable style prevented him from being quite as anonymous as the Foreign Office would have liked. Perhaps it had drawn attention to the fact that they were still providing us with a media spokesperson and questions were being asked. It had been a month since Madeleine’s disappearance, so maybe they were simply trying gently to prompt us into appointing somebody of our own to help us.

Whatever the case, it was suggested to Gerry that we should use Madeleine’s Fund to employ someone to replace Clarence once our campaign visits were complete. Reluctantly, Gerry agreed. We honestly hadn’t bargained for having to pay a salary for media liaison out of the fund, which we’d envisaged being used primarily to meet costs related directly to the search for Madeleine. It hadn’t occurred to us that we’d still be needing this kind of help a month down the line. With no way of knowing how long this would continue, we had no idea how long the money would last.

On Monday 4 June, we recorded an appeal to be screened the following evening on
Crimewatch
, the long-running BBC programme that has a good track record in helping the police to solve crimes using information supplied by the public. Our appeal was aimed in particular at any British holidaymakers who had been in the Algarve at the time of Madeleine’s abduction.

Frustratingly,
Crimewatch
was not allowed to film a reconstruction of the abduction. This was something we had wanted from the beginning, in the hope that it would encourage potential witnesses to come forward. In Britain the police often broadcast reconstructions through programmes like
Crimewatch
and news channels, but we were told that this was not possible in either Portugal or Britain because of the judicial secrecy law. We were able to show a pair of pyjamas like Madeleine’s on the programme, which was particularly important since at the time it had been incorrectly stated in some press reports that her pyjamas were white.