Madeleine McCann: Parents ‘find documentary distressing’
Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007 when she was on holiday in Portugal with her parents Kate and Gerry and siblings Sean and Amelie. A Netflix eight-part series, “The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann”, premiered this week, re-igniting interest in the unsolved case. Kate McCann wrote her own memoir in 2011, тιтled “Madeleine: Our daughter’s disappearance and the continuing search for her”.
Kate writes: “We were dreading our first Christmas without Madeleine.
“As winter approached, the prospect of this usually joyous occasion only deepened the ever-present sense of loss.
“One morning in November, Amelie talked incessantly about her sister on the way to nursery.”
The toddler said: “Madeleine’s getting a big teddy for Christmas.”
Kate McCann wrote about what she and the family “dreaded” in her 2011 book
Kate continues: “By this time, I was quite tearful.
“It always warms my heart to hear Sean and Amelie chatting about Madeleine but it was the mention of Christmas that tipped me over the edge.”
In her book, Kate also discusses the “horror” discovery she made a year into the investigation.
She explains how the tapas restaurant booking they made with friends was slightly unusual, as they managed to get a block booking for their holiday week “after having a word with the receptionist at the pool and tapas area”.
Madeleine McCann went missing from Praia da Luz in 2007
The McCann’s holiday apartment, showing the pool and tapas area at the resort
She writes: “It wasn’t until a year later, when I was combing through the Portuguese police files, that I discovered that thenote requesting our block booking was written in a staff message book, which sat on a desk at the pool reception for most of the day.
“This book was by definition accessible to all staff and, albeit unintentionally, probably to guests and visitors, too.
“To my horror, I saw that, no doubt in all innocence and simply to explain why she was bending the rules a bit, the receptionist had added the reason for our request: we wanted to eat close to our apartments as we were leaving our young children alone there and checking on them intermittently.”
She also revealed her “bitter regret” about deciding on the child-checking routine the families used to look in on the sleeping children while they ate at the nearby restaurant.
