Whatever happened to Madeleine?
The story of four-year-old Madeleine McCann and her disappearance while on holiday in Portugal in May has occupied the media all summer long.
In dinner-party chatter it has overshadowed house prices, medical complaints, political issues and sporting events.
First there were the exclamations of sympathy: that poor girl, what must her parents be going through? My heart goes out to them; that kind of thing. Then there was discussion about the wisdom of parents who left their three children in an unlocked apartment so that they could eat and drink with friends at a tapas bar about 100 yards away.
But the public reaction was forgiving. “We’ve all done it,” we said, even if we hadn’t. They were a nice-looking family as well: professional backgrounds, attractive mother, articulate and intelligent in the way they made themselves available to the media. They were middle class totems in a world that belongs to the middle class.
Xenophobic undertones
There were guilt-fuelled xenophobic undertones too, in Portugal as much as in the UK. No-one in either country wanted to imagine their respective societies were capable of producing the kind of people that prey on young innocents such as Madeleine.
And every day there was Madeleine’s photograph: the big eyes, cute eyelashes, even teeth, staring out from newspapers, posters and the badges created to publicise her disappearance.
When the police had no news, the newspapers ran stories anyway, worrying about the lack of developments, speculating about next steps, wondering how long they could sustain interest among their notoriously fickle readerships.
A young boy was shot in the head while kicking a ball around in Liverpool. For three or four days until the end of the funeral, the British nation’s collective shock, grief and incomprehension was transferred to the family of 11-year-old Rhys Jones. “What’s the world coming to?” we asked.
For the media and its readerships, if not for his family and friends, young Rhys can rest in peace. But not Madeleine. The story has changed. Police are saying openly they believe she may be dead. More than that, they are now questioning her parents who they have named as suspects in the disappearance of their child.
More public disbelief; but this time it’s accompanied by some niggling doubts: could they? Emotively, the answer has to be no because we cannot imagine a parent who would dispose of his or her own child and conceal the truth. I covered a story once in my home town of a couple whose children had disappeared. Some of the babies' remains were found in the garden. Yes, it can happen.
"They are doctors," said a friend at the weekend. "So was Harold Shipman," I said. Sometimes I hate my own cynicism. But cynicism is as close as your shadow if you work in the media, as it must be for police officers. Nothing should be discounted.
So we're all playing detectives now that the national outpouring of displaced anguish has dimmed.
Cluedo game
Newspaper writing and the interest of readers has switched to the forensic. Suspending our emotions (guiltily) we are beginning to approach the McCann case as if it was a “whodunit.” Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick?
Dispassionately – and, believe me, the media are masters of dispassion – Madeleine’s disappearance has proved the dream story: a story that feeds on itself as the prose adopts ever deeper shades of purple. We all have our opinions and our opinions are changing with every development.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if little Madeleine turned up on the doorstep of a Portuguese police station, confused but unharmed, cared for all these months by a misguided middle-aged Portuguese woman who had lost her own child in infancy?
But that is not going to happen. We refuse to imagine her fate. We may never know. We continue to sympathise with her parents, but no longer unconditionally. Most of all, however, we go to our beds at night and sleep well, relieved that our nightmares, if we have any, will end with a new day. For others, they go on and on.
In dinner-party chatter it has overshadowed house prices, medical complaints, political issues and sporting events.
First there were the exclamations of sympathy: that poor girl, what must her parents be going through? My heart goes out to them; that kind of thing. Then there was discussion about the wisdom of parents who left their three children in an unlocked apartment so that they could eat and drink with friends at a tapas bar about 100 yards away.
But the public reaction was forgiving. “We’ve all done it,” we said, even if we hadn’t. They were a nice-looking family as well: professional backgrounds, attractive mother, articulate and intelligent in the way they made themselves available to the media. They were middle class totems in a world that belongs to the middle class.
Xenophobic undertones
There were guilt-fuelled xenophobic undertones too, in Portugal as much as in the UK. No-one in either country wanted to imagine their respective societies were capable of producing the kind of people that prey on young innocents such as Madeleine.
And every day there was Madeleine’s photograph: the big eyes, cute eyelashes, even teeth, staring out from newspapers, posters and the badges created to publicise her disappearance.
When the police had no news, the newspapers ran stories anyway, worrying about the lack of developments, speculating about next steps, wondering how long they could sustain interest among their notoriously fickle readerships.
A young boy was shot in the head while kicking a ball around in Liverpool. For three or four days until the end of the funeral, the British nation’s collective shock, grief and incomprehension was transferred to the family of 11-year-old Rhys Jones. “What’s the world coming to?” we asked.
For the media and its readerships, if not for his family and friends, young Rhys can rest in peace. But not Madeleine. The story has changed. Police are saying openly they believe she may be dead. More than that, they are now questioning her parents who they have named as suspects in the disappearance of their child.
More public disbelief; but this time it’s accompanied by some niggling doubts: could they? Emotively, the answer has to be no because we cannot imagine a parent who would dispose of his or her own child and conceal the truth. I covered a story once in my home town of a couple whose children had disappeared. Some of the babies' remains were found in the garden. Yes, it can happen.
"They are doctors," said a friend at the weekend. "So was Harold Shipman," I said. Sometimes I hate my own cynicism. But cynicism is as close as your shadow if you work in the media, as it must be for police officers. Nothing should be discounted.
So we're all playing detectives now that the national outpouring of displaced anguish has dimmed.
Cluedo game
Newspaper writing and the interest of readers has switched to the forensic. Suspending our emotions (guiltily) we are beginning to approach the McCann case as if it was a “whodunit.” Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick?
Dispassionately – and, believe me, the media are masters of dispassion – Madeleine’s disappearance has proved the dream story: a story that feeds on itself as the prose adopts ever deeper shades of purple. We all have our opinions and our opinions are changing with every development.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if little Madeleine turned up on the doorstep of a Portuguese police station, confused but unharmed, cared for all these months by a misguided middle-aged Portuguese woman who had lost her own child in infancy?
But that is not going to happen. We refuse to imagine her fate. We may never know. We continue to sympathise with her parents, but no longer unconditionally. Most of all, however, we go to our beds at night and sleep well, relieved that our nightmares, if we have any, will end with a new day. For others, they go on and on.
Labels: Cluedo, Harold Shipman, Madeleine McCann, portugal, Rhys Jones, tapas, Whodunit, xenophobic
posted by Richard Donkin at
10:52 AM
2 Comments
