Madeleine (9 page)

We dropped the kids off at their clubs for the last hour and a half, meeting up with them as usual for tea. Only two minor aspects of that evening stand out as differing from the norm. The first was that Russell didn’t join us for dinner. Evie wasn’t well so he stayed with their girls in the apartment and Jane took his meal to him there. The second was that some time in the early hours Madeleine came through to our bedroom, complaining that Amelie was crying and had woken her up. Gerry checked on Amelie, who settled quickly, and we let Madeleine jump into bed with us.

Wednesday, 2 May 2007. Our last completely happy day. Our last, to date, as a family of five. If only it was possible to rewind. Even for an hour.

Today it rained. The children went to their clubs, but our tennis lessons were postponed. Instead we joined Fiona, David and Dianne at the Millennium restaurant for coffee. We then returned to our apartment and a little while later I left again, to go for a run with Matt. I’d bought a new pair of running shoes a few days before we’d left for Portugal and they were certainly getting a good initiation. They were pink, which I wasn’t quite sure about – I wondered how seriously a runner in pink trainers could be taken – but after a few outings in the sand they weren’t looking quite so glaring and girly. As we ran along the promenade, a small dog jumped out from under a bench and attacked my right calf. It was pretty sore and I was a bit shaken, but I carried on as coolly as I could manage. Maybe he just didn’t like those pink trainers.

Gerry and I picked up the children, had lunch in the apartment and then took them to the play area for an hour before walking them to their clubs. The tennis group lessons were rescheduled for the afternoon: Gerry’s group first, followed by mine. After that it was the usual routine: tea with the children, playtime, bathtime, milk, stories, kids’ bedtime, get ready, Tapas at 8.30pm.

Tonight it was Rachael’s turn to be feeling a bit under the weather and she gave dinner a miss, remaining in her apartment next door to ours. The only other difference was that after dinner we ventured into the enclosed bar area – where it was, to my relief, warmer – for a liqueur. As a result we went back to our apartments a little later than normal. It also meant that the time between our last check of the children and our return was longer, closer to forty-five minutes.

At about 11.50pm, Gerry abruptly announced, ‘Right, I’m off to bed. Goodnight.’ As he turned to leave, Dave said jokingly, ‘She’s not
that
bad, Gerry!’ I must admit I was slightly hurt that Gerry should just go off without me, as if I was unimportant – irrelevant, even – and Dave’s remark was an indication that it wasn’t just me being over-sensitive. Let me tell you something about Gerry. His honesty and openness make him very direct, often to the point of bluntness, and he’s not a touchy-feely guy. Like many men, he assumes I take his feelings as read and doesn’t see any need to express them with soft-soaping, flowers or cards. And although, like most women, I would appreciate the odd romantic gesture, the fact that he has always been loyal, solid and loving deep down, where it really matters, is far more important. It’s just Gerry, I’m used to his foibles and generally any deficiencies in gallantry simply go over my head.

As far as Gerry was concerned, it was late, he was tired, and he was going to bed. End of story. I am not sure why I was miffed by his lack of social graces that particular evening. Perhaps because the other guys in the group were all attentive ‘new men’, compared with Gerry, at least, and I was a bit embarrassed. Anyway, I followed him a few minutes later. He certainly was tired, because by the time I got into the apartment, he was asleep – snoring, in fact. Still feeling a bit offended, I decided to go and sleep with the children. This was highly unusual; unprecedented, even: the only occasions when we ever slept apart were when our jobs and on-call duties dictated it. I wasn’t the type to flounce off to the spare room and never would have done so at home.

I suppose it was because there was a bed made up and ready in the other bedroom and at that moment my peaceful, slumbering babies were more attractive room-mates than my snoring husband. It was a storm in a teacup, and I’m loath even to mention it as it was such an isolated incident and not at all representative of our relationship. However, since every scrap of information was shortly to become potentially crucial, I feel it is necessary to state for the record that I was in that room that night.

Though it can have no bearing that I can imagine on subsequent events, the thought of Gerry and me sleeping alone on this of all nights still makes me feel sad.

5

MISSING

On Thursday 3 May I awoke in the children’s bedroom. I can’t remember who was up first but I know we had all surfaced by about 7.30am. I’m not even sure whether Gerry had actually noticed I’d slept in the other room and I chose not to mention it. At breakfast time, Madeleine had a question for us. ‘Why didn’t you come when Sean and I cried last night?’

We were puzzled. Did she mean when they were having their bath? we asked her. Or just after they’d gone to bed? Children often get a bit fractious around bedtime, though I had no recollection of any tears from either Madeleine or Sean before they settled the previous evening. And it certainly hadn’t been in the early hours, because I’d been in the room with them, even closer than usual.

Madeleine didn’t answer or elaborate. Instead she moved on to some other topic that had popped into her head, apparently unconcerned. She certainly didn’t seem to be at all anxious or upset. Madeleine is bright, articulate and has never been backwards in coming forwards. If something had happened to make her cry, it was pretty unlikely that she wouldn’t tell us about it, assuming she remembered what it was.

Gerry and I were disconcerted. Could Madeleine and Sean have woken up while we were at dinner? If so, it was worrying, obviously, but it didn’t seem very probable. As I’ve said, not only did they rarely stir at all at night, but if they did it was hardly ever, and I mean ever, before the early hours. If they had done so on this occasion, it would mean they’d woken up, cried for a while, calmed themselves down and fallen asleep again – all within the space of half an hour. Or forty-five minutes, if it had been after our last check. Children usually need some soothing back to sleep once they’ve woken, especially if two of them are awake and upset at the same time, and it seemed highly unlikely they’d have gone through all these stages without one of them overlapping with one of our checks. It wasn’t impossible, but it seemed implausible.

Not for a moment did we think there might be some sinister reason for this occurrence, if indeed anything had occurred. If only foresight came as easily to us as hindsight. Within hours, the explanation for this would seem hugely important, and so haunted have I been ever since by Madeleine’s words that morning that I’ve continued to blame myself for not sitting down and making completely certain there was no more information I could draw out of her.

Why hadn’t this rung any alarm bells with me? How did I manage to conclude, subconsciously or otherwise, that if she had woken it was simply a rare aberration with a benign cause: a bad dream, perhaps? If in fact I ever did come to any real conclusion. It was more a case of her question just hanging there quietly, unanswered. This could have been my one chance to prevent what was about to happen, and I blew it. In the infrequent moments when I’m able to be kinder to myself, I can acknowledge, if only temporarily, that there was absolutely nothing to give me any reason for suspicion and that we can all be clever after the event. But it is my belief there was somebody either in or trying to get into the children’s bedroom that night, and that is what disturbed them.

The only other unexplained detail I remember from that morning was a large, brown stain I noticed on Madeleine’s pink Eeyore pyjama top. I couldn’t recall seeing it the night before and I had no idea how it might have got there. It looked like a tea stain. Gerry and I do drink quite a bit of tea, and Madeleine, too, would have the odd small cup. So at the time I just assumed it was a drink spillage that had escaped our attention, and that might well be all it was. But now, of course, we can no longer make assumptions about anything that can’t be accounted for.

The morning continued like the others with kids’ clubs and tennis. After my lesson, I hung around on the grassy play area, watching Gerry on the court and chatting to Russell, who I’d found there. Another guest appeared with a video camera to record his three-year-old daughter playing mini-tennis. He looked a little embarrassed and laughingly remarked to us that filming in this way made him feel like a dirty old man. It led to a conversation between the three of us about paedophiles. I remember Russell talking about how everything had got a bit out of hand, that these days people were so untrusting you hardly dared speak to children you didn’t know. What he was effectively saying was that the world had become paranoid; that he wanted his daughters to grow up with confidence and a sense of freedom. The other dad and I chipped in with our views – I mentioned not being allowed to take photographs of your own kids in swimming pools any longer – and we agreed that it was a shame things had come to this, especially for the children. It would be some days before Russell and I were able to acknowledge to each other the horrible irony of this conversation.

A little later, near the sun-loungers at the Tapas end of the swimming pool, some of our group were discussing whether to cancel our dinner booking in the evening and take the kids to the Millennium instead. We’d heard that another couple we’d met had tried unsuccessfully to book a table at the Tapas restaurant and we wondered whether it was fair of us to be taking over the place. Although the restaurant was accepting other reservations, our party of nine occupied most of the available places and I, for one, felt rather guilty about that. However, when someone pointed out that we’d be gone by Saturday whereas this family was staying on for another week, it didn’t seem quite so unreasonable, and we decided to stick with our original plan. Another of those apparently trivial decisions . . .

I returned to our apartment before Gerry had finished his tennis lesson and washed and hung out Madeleine’s pyjama top on the veranda. After preparing some lunch, I went with Fiona to pick up Madeleine and Scarlett, who was in the adjoining Baby Club, taking her on the quicker route through the grounds of the Ocean Club, which she hadn’t yet discovered. Fiona and Dave had been windsurfing that morning and had seen Madeleine’s group, who had gone down to the beach for their ‘mini-sail’ activity. We heard later that they’d been on a speedboat as well as a dinghy. Fiona told me she’d spotted Ella there but not Madeleine.

Some images are etched for all time on my brain. Madeleine that lunchtime is one of them. She was wearing an outfit I’d bought especially for her holiday: a peach-coloured smock top from Gap and some white broderie-anglaise shorts from Monsoon – a small extravagance, perhaps, but I’d pictured how lovely she would look in them and I’d been right. She was striding ahead of Fiona and me, swinging her bare arms to and fro. The weather was a little on the cool side and I remember thinking I should have brought a cardigan for her, although she seemed oblivious of the temperature, just happy and carefree. I was following her with my eyes, admiring her. I wonder now, the nausea rising in my throat, if someone else was doing the same.

At the Toddler Club near the Tapas restaurant Fiona collected Lily and headed back to her flat. Madeleine and I met up with Sean, Amelie and Gerry and returned to ours for lunch. As the children were getting quite restless in the apartment we decided to get them out in the fresh air before the afternoon’s activities. We went to the play area, which was such a hit with our three that they never seemed to get fed up with it. We then sat round the toddler pool for a while, dipping our feet in, and I took what has turned out to be my last photograph to date of Madeleine. Heartbreaking as it is for me to look at it now, it encapsulates the essence of Madeleine: so beautiful and so happy.

Together we took Sean and Amelie back to the Toddler Club at around 2.40pm and dropped Madeleine off with the Minis ten minutes later. Ella was already there. Gerry and I had booked an hour-long couples’ tennis lesson with the professional coach at three-thirty, and as the courts were unoccupied, we decided to have a knock-up for half an hour first. Near the end of our lesson, as I strove desperately to improve my substandard backhand, another guest appeared, and he and Gerry decided to have a game together.

Having arranged for Gerry to meet the children, I opted to go for a run along the beach, where I spotted the rest of our holiday group. They saw me and shouted some words of encouragement. At least, I think that’s what they were shouting! I remember feeling fleetingly disappointed that we hadn’t known they were all heading for the beach, as it might have been nice to have joined them, especially for the kids. I wondered whether Madeleine had been OK about staying behind at Mini Club when Russ or Jane had collected Ella. I wasn’t to know at that stage that in fact they had only just arrived when I ran by. It’s hard work being a mum sometimes, fretting about the possible effects of the smallest of incidents on your children. I’m sure a lot of these worries are unfounded but it doesn’t stop us having them, and we’ll probably go on having them for the rest of our lives.

I had finished my run by five-thirty at the Tapas area, where I found Madeleine and the twins already having their tea with Gerry. The others had decided to feed their kids at the beachside restaurant, the Paraíso. Madeleine was sitting on the Tapas terrace, eating. She looked so pale and worn out, I went straight up to her and asked if she was all right. Had she been OK at the club when Ella left to go to the beach? Yes, she said, but now she was really tired and wanted me to pick her up, which I did. Ten minutes later, the five of us went back to our apartment. I was carrying Madeleine. Because she was so exhausted we skipped playtime that evening.