The full quote from Kate McCann's book...
At 9.50pm, I rang Clement. ‘Come on round,’ he said. ‘It’ l be nice to see you. But you’l have to forgive my night-time attire.’ We found Clement watching a cookery programme, dressed, as promised, in his nightshirt. It was so ordinary and comforting, a bit like going to see your grandad after a horrible day at school. He gave me one of his looks and a giant glass of brandy, and managed to get a smile out of me with his greeting: ‘So, Kate, which of the devout Catholic, alcoholic, depressed, nymphomaniac parts is correct?’ His response to our catalogue of horrors was merely to raise an eyebrow. Clement had this way of making everything seem a little less terrible. When he heard about the dogs, he remarked laconicaly, ‘So what are they going to do? Put them on the stand? One bark for yes, two for no?’ He was right, of course; it was ridiculous. A couple of hours later, fortified by our brandies (it was my first-ever taste of the stuff), some useful snippets of advice and several amusing anecdotes, we left our friend feeling quite a bit better than we had when we’d arrived. The shock of that day, and of what we were now facing, on top of the trauma of Madeleine’s absence, never left us for a second, but it was interludes like this that gave us just enough strength to carry on.
