Last updated at 6:30 PM on 8th May 2011
- She reveals how she slept in a separate room after she felt hurt and upset by what husband Gerry said
- The hours leading up to moment Madeleine was discovered missing are revealed
- Why the McCanns left their three children alone in the holiday apartment
Determined: Kate McCann with her daughter Amelie at the Church of the Sacred Heart
Angry Kate McCann slept alone the night before Madeleine disappeared after Gerry offended her at dinner, she revealed today.
Upset by his 'abrupt' behaviour, she took a spare bed in the children's room at the family's holiday apartment in Portugal.
In another extract of her upcoming book, Mrs McCann reveals she is haunted by an awful missed chance when she believes Madeleine tried to alert her that somebody had attempted to break into the bedroom where she slept with her siblings Sean and Amelie.
With hindsight, it could have been her 'one chance to prevent what was about to happen', said Mrs McCann, adding: 'And I blew it.'
Madeleine disappeared aged three from her bed in the family's apartment in Praia da Luz, the Algarve, on the evening of May 3, 2007, while her parents were eating at a nearby Tapas restaurant - as they did every night of the holiday.
The possible missed chance came at breakfast on the day Madeleine vanished, when the little girl disconcerted her mother by asking: 'Why didn't you come when Sean and I cried last night?' Mrs McCann, 43, says: 'Not for a moment did we think there might be some sinister explanation. But it is [now] my belief there was somebody either in or trying to get into the children's bedroom that night, and that is what disturbed them.
'So haunted have I been ever since by Madeleine's words 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.' Her heart-wrenching book, called Madeleine, is being published this Thursday - the day of Madeleine's eighth birthday.
Mrs McCann's book will be on sale on May 12 - her missing daughter Madeleine's eighth birthday. She is pictured here with her youngest daughter Amelie going to the Church of the Sacred Heart in their hometown
In one extract, Mrs McCann describes her horror at discovering a predatory paedophile could easily have been tipped off that Madeleine was vulnerable, by a staff note on display at reception which revealed the McCanns 'were leaving our young children alone...and checking on them intermittently'. The note was written by a receptionist to staff explaining why they wanted to reserve tables every night close to their apartment.
Missing: Madeleine has still not been found four years after she disappeared in the Algarve
Although she is 'loath' to make it public by writing it in the book, Mrs McCann describes how she and Gerry had a row on the final night before their daughter was lost.
As the couple and their holiday friends were enjoying a drink at the bar, at 11.50pm, Mr McCann 'abruptly announced' that he was tired and off to bed.
His wife was 'slightly hurt' he had gone without her, and writes: '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.
'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.' When she followed him a few minutes later, she found him already asleep and snoring and so, 'still feeling a bit offended', she chose a bed in the children's room because 'my peaceful slumbering babies were more attractive room-mates'.
Former GP Mrs McCann, whose 384-page book is being serialised in The Sunday Times and The Sun newspapers, says she still feels sad at the memory - though stresses the 'isolated' incident was not reflective of their relationship as a couple.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Mrs McCann says her hospital consultant husband had an ability to 'switch off' from the grief, and was 'functioning' again much sooner than she was. She admitted: 'Sometimes I found it almost offensive, as if somehow he wasn't grieving enough.'
Recalling a television appeal to the abductor they recorded together, Mr McCann added: 'That day I remember we were concerned we weren't crying. The thing is, we're not actors. We were trying to focus on getting our message out.' The McCanns, of Rothley, Leicestershire, are hoping the sale of the book will raise 1million to fund the continued search for their missing daughter.
Unity: The couple have remained together and are hoping the sales from the book will raise money so they can continue searching for Madeleine
Yesterday Mrs McCann and her youngest daughter Amelie attended church in the village, where prayers were said for Madeleine.
Mrs McCann dispels suggestions she and Gerry were drunk on the fateful night, saying their alcohol consumption was 'hardly excessive', and that although their group of nine friends was nosier than other tables, they were not 'partying wildly'.
In fact, she said they were so tired they nearly had dinner inside their own apartment on the night Madeleine vanished - but then decided that would be anti-social.
MASS PRAYER
With the bumbling Portuguese police getting nowhere, terror-struck Kate McCann turned to all she had left: divine intervention.
Five hours after Madeleine went missing, she tried to mobilise a mass prayer at 3am.
First she telephoned her friend Father Paul Seddon, the priest who had married her and Gerry in 1998, and then her best friend Michelle back in the UK.
'I needed her to get her large Catholic family praying too,' said Mrs McCann, who had already been on her knees in her bedroom, 'begging God and Our Lady to protect Madeleine and help us find her'.
Unsurprisingly, her friend Michelle was asleep and her partner Jon, who answered the phone, was at first reluctant to wake her.
Mrs McCann said: 'Poor Jon - I don't think he could quite get his brain in gear for a moment or two. "No one's listening" I wept. "Nothing's happening".' After arranging the mass prayer, Mrs McCann could not sleep, but her husband told her: 'Kate, we need to rest.'
WHY THEY HAD NO BABYSITTER
Leaving Madeleine with a babysitter who none of them knew would have been 'unwise', Kate McCann declares in her book.
Explaining why they did not make use of the babysitting service offered by the Ocean Club, she said the couple never even thought about it.
She said: 'I could argue that leaving my children alone with someone neither we nor they knew would have been unwise, and it's certainly not something we'd do at home, but we didn't even consider it.
'We felt so secure we simply didn't think it was necessary.' With the infamous tapas restaurant 'so near', the McCanns and their friends decided to do their own child-checking service, said Mrs McCann, adding: 'It goes without saying that we now bitterly regret it.'
However British police later told the couple their holiday apartment, being a corner flat on the ground floor, next to two roads and with secluded entrances, made it a perfect target for criminals.
Childless Kate and Gerry McCann endured two traumatic bouts of IVF treatment before conceiving Madeleine.
As a young doctor, Mrs McCann had seen countless desperate women put themselves through the procedure - and had declared then she would never put herself through the pain if she ever found she could not have children naturally.
But after two years of failing to get pregnant, she said she 'didn't think twice' about going down the IVF route, and her first attempt seemed to go well. She felt so confident and excited, going to the hospital two weeks after the embryos were implanted, that when the pregnancy test was negative,
'I simply couldn't believe it,' she recalls. Two months later, the couple had a further setback, when the hospital informed them two more healthy embryos they had had frozen during the first IVF attempt had not survived being defrosted. 'Another pallet of bricks dropped on my chest,' said Mrs McCann of the news.
The couple were keen to start trying again immediately, but a practical problem stood in their way: at the point Gerry would need to provide his sperm, he was due to give a presentation at a cardiac conference in Berlin, an important stepping stone in his career.
Mrs McCann recalled: 'My heart sank. It would mean many more months of waiting, but how could he miss this conference? That evening, as I was cooking dinner, Gerry gave me a hug and told me he'd decided not to go to Berlin. The IVF was more important.'
This time, the procedure was successful, and at six weeks' pregnant, Mrs McCann had a scan and saw a beating heart.
'And that was the first time we saw our little Madeleine,' she says. 'Even then she was beautiful.'
I can't help but think, that for every second that the media has given to following the spectacle, it could have been used to help others. What about all the other 'Maddies' who, because their parents weren't rich enough couldn't get air time to ask for help? How many other lives could have been saved instead of covering this one? What about the Other parents who have lost children, had them kidnapped, and can't get anyone to help them, because everyone is focussing on poor little Maddie. Are other children not as special as this one? No, I believe the McCanns should end this.
- Danny, Cant., 08/5/2011 17:28
Report abuse