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Book launched to keep private investigation afloat as couple call on David Cameron to 'pick up phone' and seek review
Easter Day marked the moment when Kate and Gerry McCann calculated that they had now spent more time without their daughter, Madeleine, than with her. It was an emotional milestone in the grim, compelling narrative of the couple's lives.
And on Thursday they faced another – their daughter's eighth birthday. They faced it together, holding hands before a battery of press cameras, under the heat of TV studio lights and in front of radio microphones giving her the only present it was in their power to give: publicity.
Four years after Madeleine was snatched as she slept in the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, as her parents dined nearby, her mother chose the anniversary to launch her excoriatingly personal book called, simply, Madeleine.
The decision to publish it had been "very difficult, and taken with heavy hearts", she said. Sharing the "personal, intimate and emotional aspects of our lives" with strangers did not come easily.
But it was born of necessity, to raise money to keep the couple's private investigation into Madeleine's disappearance funded. It is the only investigation, they stressed, as Portuguese police have long since abandoned theirs.
It was to record, for their twins Amelie and Sean, aged six, an account of "the truth". Fundamentally, it was also to find Madeleine. "As with every action we have taken over the last four years, it ultimately boils down to whether what we are doing could help us find Madeleine. When the answer to that is yes, or even possibly, our family can cope with anything," she said.
There has been much to cope with. Kate's anguish captured in myriad pictures – clutching a rosary and Madeleine's Cuddle Cat – is not easily forgotten. Flayed by the media frenzy, subjected to "smears and lies" in the press, to "bile and hate" on the internet, they were demonised in some quarters in Britain and Portugal.
Their transformation from grief-stricken parents who had surely suffered the cruellest fate, to arguido, formal suspects (before they were cleared), was beyond their comprehension. Kate's "poise and control", she believes, was interpreted as her being a "cold and emotionless woman".
But here they are again, sitting in a packed press conference at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London, facing the cameras as part of a marathon round of appearances they have told themselves they must endure.
The purpose is to promote the book. It is also to appeal to David Cameron to facilitate a full, independent review of the police investigation into Madeleine's disappearance, which was shelved in 2008. And the couple, both doctors, need the public behind them to achieve this.
So once more Kate, 43, is poised and controlled, reading aloud a section from her foreword, turning her head at the request of photographers, behind her the familiar picture of Madeleine, aged three, her face with its unique flawed pupil staring out from the book cover.
Gerry, 42, sitting beside her, said they had "come to the end of our tether. We want action from the government, not rhetoric," he said, urging the public to sign the petition for a review they hope could uncover a "key piece of the jigsaw" which may have been overlooked.
They want Cameron to talk to his Portuguese counterpart, and to offer the services of the Metropolitan police to review the investigation. "We've met three separate home secretaries, and we're still not sure what the government has actually done. The prime minister does have it in his power to pick up the phone and speak to his counterpart," he said.
His wife added: "When you're in a position such as the prime minister, you have a responsibility. If you're not willing to work for a child, you have to ask: who are you working for?"
The former home secretary Alan Johnson did commission an exercise by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre in March 2010 to look at the feasibility of carrying out a review of the case. The couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, still do not know the results.
They must "continue to raise awareness", said Gerry. And to that end, his wife has been prepared to reveal her torment, her guilt, her suicidal thoughts, even uncomfortable details of their sex life, on the pages of a tabloid newspaper. It's all offered up for public consumption.
Already her book has racked up large advance sales, and has been the top-selling book for several days on Amazon.
Based on the daily diary she has kept since Madeleine vanished, the book records her initial reaction to the chilling discovery, on 3 May 2007, that their daughter's bed was empty. "Nausea, terror, disbelief, fear, icy fear, dear God. Life without Madeleine had begun," she writes.
But it is a life with hope. "There is no evidence at all that she has come to any harm," said Kate.
And unless or until there is, they will continue to believe she is alive and they will be reunited one day. "Madeleine is everywhere, she is with us all the time," Kate told one interviewer. "Only yesterday Sean and Amelie were asking 'How tall is Madeleine now?"