Mrs McCann, 42, faced criticism because she appeared cold and did not break down. But she revealed how in her bleakest hours, she wanted to die to stop the pain. 

Suffering together: Kate and Gerry McCann during their interview yesterday

The former GP and her husband Gerry, 41, gave their most honest and moving
interview to the BBC World Service to mark the third anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance on Monday.

Madeleine was three when she vanished from her parents’ rented apartment in the
Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz as they ate at a nearby restaurant with friends.

There have been no confirmed sightings since. But the couple, who also have twins
Sean and Amelie, five, have not given up.

The McCanns, of Rothley, Leicestershire, have launched a ‘holiday pack’ of stickers
and posters showing Madeleine’s face. They hope holiday-makers will distribute them around the world to try to find Madeleine.

Longing for death:

GERRY: Really early on, there was a time when I was worried because Kate said she wanted to go into the ocean and keep swimming and swimming and swimming. That obviously caused great distress. The emotions are so raw early on.

KATE: I used to have thoughts like maybe we’ll get wiped out in the car on the motorway. So it would just happen, we’d all be gone and the pain would be away. But there’s always somebody left behind with that pain. We have got family who have been fantastic, friends who have been fantastic.

It was just so painful and it’s just so hard to describe, that heavy, suffocating feeling day in day out, that pain of missing Madeleine and anxiety for her.

There were times when I did want it to end. I wouldn’t have done anything, I have never thought of doing anything, but what I do know now for sure is that I don’t want that. Things have changed. I am desperate to be here with Sean and Amelie and to help find Madeleine.

What they believe has happened to Madeleine:

KATE: You just hope that it’s somebody who is looking after Madeleine. Who knows why they’ve taken her but I hope they’re looking after her and that she’s comfortable in the situation she’s in, that she is not at harm and that she’s getting love and happiness. That’s all I can hope for.

GERRY: Early on we couldn’t think of anything else but the worst case, where everything was negative, that she’d been taken, abused and killed and dumped, or maybe left seriously injured and dumped out in the freezing cold.

I can promise you we could think of almost no other scenario. Of course, that scenario is still possible… but there is no evidence of physical harm to Madeleine. As parents, we can’t accept she’s dead without absolute evidence of that.

KATE: In my heart, I feel she’s out there. I really do. And that, together with the feeling that I have of this not being over, of her still being there. The hardest thing, obviously, is how do we find her?

Sean and Amelie:

GERRY: Sean, in particular, talks about having an aeroplane and flying all over the world looking for ‘that man who’s taken Madeleine’ and when he gets him he’s going to rescue her and take his sword out.

KATE: At the moment they don’t show any signs of anger. A month or so ago, I went for a run and I suddenly started thinking about Sean and Amelie getting much older, they will understand more.

They’re going to feel the same kind of pain and loss and anger that we’ve felt over the last couple of years. I suddenly thought, ‘I don’t want them to feel that’.

I know how hard it has been for us, I don’t want them to have to go through that in addition to not having their sister with them.

Kate’s dreams:

I HAVE only had three dreams, all the same, they’re when I find her. It’s actually when I see her. They are actually incredibly painful.

The first one I was in Portugal and it was very tangible… I think I got rung by the nursery where she went to and they said ‘Madeleine’s here’. I went but then I was holding her and it felt like I was holding her and then I woke up and I was hysterical, actually, it was horrible.

Torture of not knowing: Mr McCann said he will not accept Madeleine is dead until he has proof

Why they left children:

Torture of not knowing: Mr McCann said he will not accept Madeleine is dead until he has proof

KATE: It just felt so safe, subconsciously, that was the restaurant for the apartments where we were staying. I think it took me 37 seconds to go back to the apartment.

The fact that I didn’t have to consciously think, ‘Is this right or is this wrong, is this safe or is it not?’, implies that I thought it was totally safe. I had a flashback recently of that, of me and Gerry just holding each other and saying ‘We’ve let her down, we’ve let her down’, just because we weren’t there. I would never in a million years have anticipated something like that.

GERRY: If anything, prior to this, I would have said Kate was overprotective. The fact that she was so comfortable, we were all comfortable… It wasn’t a debate, we just didn’t perceive risk at all.

Police investigation:

KATE: If this was a murder inquiry there’d be an active investigation because they’d want to find the perpetrator. But as it stands we have a perpetrator who’s still at
large and therefore puts – potentially puts – other children at risk, and we still have a missing child.

So why is there no active investigation? I’m angry and frustrated really, this is our daughter, she’s still missing and there’s no investigation to find her. It’s a farce.

GERRY: Officially for 18 months and longer, law enforcement are not proactively doing anything to find Madeleine, and who took her, and I just think that is fundamentally unacceptable… There have been individuals who, for whatever reason, have seemingly not wanted to find Madeleine. That’s how it appears to us… There are many people who’ve tried to derail what we’re doing along the way.

KATE: I also think there’ll be some people who would be greatly embarrassed if Madeleine was found and that scares me. That might affect their want, or not, for Madeleine to be found.

Belief in God:

GERRY: If anything, when this first happened it strengthened my faith. I felt that there was such support and I really felt that may have been God’s work, that something good was going to come out of this.

I’m struggling much more now, without a doubt. I think that for one child to have been the recipient of so many millions of prayers, you think, ‘Well I do have my doubt’. If those prayers were going to work, they should have worked a long time ago.

KATE: I don’t hate God… I just can’t understand why so much could be allowed to land on one family and go seemingly unchallenged. So I would be angry with God but then I would voice that, I would let it out.

Prayers for abductor:

KATE: I usually pray for them to see the error of their ways, to have compassion and courage to come forward… The pain and the fear that it’s caused Madeleine and the pain it’s caused to our family makes it incredibly difficult to sit here and say ‘Yes, I forgive him’. It would be important to know who’s taken Madeleine and why.

GERRY: Until we find Madeleine and who took her we don’t know what we will be asked to forgive.