Are we
really so desperate for Madeleine's story to have a dramatic
conclusion that we want to push her parents over the edge?
Are we
trying to kill the McCanns? Well, that's what it feels like as,
day after day, the barrage of critical stories keeps coming.
Kate
McCann finally broke down on Spanish TV and showed all the
emotion she has been accused of lacking.
The
doctor whose professional manner and pretty face have attracted
so many bitchy comments was barely able to control herself.
Practically howling like a wounded animal, she said that, as
Madeleine's Mummy, she believed her little girl was still alive.
Were
her critics satisfied? No, poor Kate had apparently cried the
wrong kind of tears. Tears of guilt, not sorrow.
Now
that she was showing her true feelings, all those armchair
detectives concluded that Maddie's mum must be faking it.
![](mail-31-10-07-mcs.jpg) |
Under attack again: The McCanns should be left in
peace |
Seventy per cent of viewers said that they did not believe the
McCanns.
They
were bothered by Gerry and Kate's body language - the couple
appeared unable to comfort each other.
Suspicious, eh?
Furthermore, Gerry was overheard coldly telling his wife to make
sure her microphone was turned off before she spoke to him.
My,
how a million amateur Sherlock Holmeses loved that clue!
Please note that Gerry is always described as doing things
coldly.
Not
numbly.
Not
in the shell-shocked manner of a man who has failed in his most
sacred duty as a father, which was to protect his first-born
daughter from harm.
A
proud man who has pulled himself up into a good profession from
a poor Glasgow background and who must be humbled daily by the
knowledge that all his achievements are as dust weighed against
this one monumental, agonising failure.
And
now the McCanns are under attack again, this time for making two
mortgage payments out of the Madeleine Fund.
Yet
when Gerry says that he is going back to work this week as a
heart specialist, he is accused of being too distraught and
potentially putting his patients at risk.
So
what are the family supposed to do for money? Or must they sell
the house and live rough with the twins on the street to appease
the snarling gods of public opinion?
Why
can't we just accept that shock does strange, deforming things
to people? Unexploded grief can blow entire families apart when
they appear to be in the same room.
In
his new autobiography, former England rugby captain Lawrence
Dallaglio movingly recalls the devastating effect on his own
family when his 19-year-old sister, Francesca, perished in the
Marchioness riverboat disaster in 1989.
"Dad
was in one place, trying to be very stoic and behaving as he
thought the head of the family should behave. Mum was overcome
with grief and clearly traumatised," writes Lawrence.
Eileen Dallaglio later admitted she had gone into a type of
shock from which she did not recover for 15 years.
Like
Kate McCann, she threw herself into campaigning to make things
safer for other people's children.
Lawrence's dad eventually had a heart attack, believed to have
been triggered by all the suppressed emotion.
Is
that the ending we foresee for Gerry McCann?
The
cardiac specialist who dies of a broken heart? Or would the
couple's tormentors settle for mental breakdown and divorce as
the latest twist in the nation's favourite soap opera?
Or
here's a thought: how about leaving the McCanns in peace to
salvage what remains of their lives, and to begin the slow and
painful process of grieving properly for the daughter they have
lost?
It
may not make for front-page drama, but it's the development they
surely deserve.
Meanwhile, six months on, Portuguese detectives have made a
stunning breakthrough in the case.
They
think it's possible that Madeleine was abducted.
Well,
it's a start. |