Kate McCann: Dignified, polite, a fighter – a true marvel of a womanAs police ignite fresh hope that Madeleine McCann could still be alive, Katy Brand stops to marvel Kate, the missing girl's mother, who has been tested to the absolute limits of what any of us could endure, but remains a dignified and polite fighting spirit.
Kate McCann: The kind of pressure, torment and double-edged hope she must live with everyday would surely have
crippled most of us by now. Photo: JOHN TAYLORBy Katy Brand
1:41PM BST 05 Jul 2013
Who would be Kate McCann? The kind of pressure, torment and double-edged hope she must live with everyday would surely have crippled most of us by now. To lose a child is bad enough, but to then be made a suspect in that child’s murder, to be exploited and intruded upon by newspapers as detailed in her evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, to deal with hundreds of supposed sightings of her little girl in the months and years that have followed from that fateful night, endless speculation, hopes raised and dashed, the break up of her marriage and feeling that this will never be resolved.When Madeleine McCann disappeared from her hotel room in Portugal on that night in 2007 – it seems simultaneously like decades ago and only yesterday – the whole world was wide-eyed with horror. Watching her traumatised parents try to negotiate an increasingly worrying police procedure that led eventually to suspicion hanging over they themselves and accusations that Kate was ‘not emotional enough’ to be truly innocent, was a sickening and sobering experience.
The likelihood that this sweet little girl would ever be found seemed to diminish with every moment that passed, but there has been news this week that the police are pursuing new leads. Fresh hope, but also perhaps, fresh hell – that well known film quote, ‘I can take the despair, it’s the hope I can’t stand’ springs to mind, and once again I am in awe of Kate McCann as she lifts her heart and mind to the possibility of being reunited, against all known statistical odds, with her daughter some six years on.
Recent events have shown that it is not an entirely unrealistic hope – the unfolding of the Ohio abduction case that dominated the news in May this year must have had an effect on the McCann family. Abductee Amanda Berry’s now famous 911 call, ‘Help me. I’m Amanda Berry. I’ve been on the news for the last 10 years. I’m free,’ was an extraordinary reminder that miracles can happen, but whether this is of comfort to the McCanns is another matter. Another high profile alleged case of child abduction has been in the news this week too and is a reminder that it doesn’t always turn out that way.
But Kate McCann is still fighting – of course she is – what else can she do? The idea that she would let it go is one that nobody who has ever cared deeply about another human being, another living creature, let alone their own small child, would ever suggest. This is a mother who has been tested to the absolute limits of what any of us could endure, but still she is dignified, she speaks politely and articulately to the very papers that have exploited her grief, she washes her hair and puts on clean clothes, she cares for her other children. How she does it is astonishing to me, but while there is hope, she shows no signs of stopping.
A friend of mine wrote movingly recently about the love a mother has for her child. She likened it to the gold hoard of Anglo-Saxon myth and poetry – a vast treasure house that can never be diminished, no matter what. As Kate McCann faces another round of hopeful searching, tempered by caution borne out experience, it will only add to her gold hoard, rather than diminish it. She may not feel rich, she may not feel strong, but in so many ways she is the richest and the strongest.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10162189/Madeleine-McCanns-mother-Kate-McCann-Dignified-polite-a-fighter-a-true-marvel-of-a-woman.html
