Madeleine (2 page)

We are also hopeful that this book may help the investigation in other ways. Perhaps it might prompt someone who has relevant information (maybe without even knowing it) to come forward and share it with our team. Somebody holds that key piece of the jigsaw. Indirectly, it may boost our search simply by enlightening those who, for whatever reason, believe Madeleine is no longer alive, or that there is nothing else that can be done to find her. We trust it will put to rest some of the myths that have sprung up around her abduction. As will become clear in the following pages, while we still do not know what happened to Madeleine, there remains no evidence whatsoever to suggest that she has come to serious harm.

Although writing this book has been a time-consuming and, at times, heartbreaking experience, it has been made a little easier by the fact that I have kept a daily journal since towards the end of May 2007. This is something that would not have occurred to me. It was suggested by a man I met in the course of the innumerable meetings Gerry and I had that month with experts helping us to negotiate the emotional and practical minefield in which we found ourselves. I am for ever in his debt for this advice. Initially, it seemed a good way of keeping a record for Madeleine of what happened in the days she was away from us, but writing everything down turned out to be immensely therapeutic for me. It provided me with a release valve for my thoughts and extreme feelings. It was a place where I could shout what I was unable to shout from the rooftops. And it gave me a means of communicating with Madeleine.

My journal was also to prove invaluable when Gerry and I later felt it necessary to quash claims made about where we were and what we were doing at various times. Now it has been pressed into service once more as the basis for much of this book. It has enabled me to recall with clarity my innermost reflections at periods when my whole life was clouded by despair, and it is the reason why I have been able, four years down the line, to be so precise about the timings of particular events.

What follows is an intensely personal account, and I make no apology for that. Since 3 May 2007, there has undoubtedly been much going on behind the scenes we haven’t known about and perhaps never will. I have been as open as possible about everyone involved in the story. As our investigation is still ongoing, and for legal reasons, some opinions or episodes cannot be shared until Madeleine is found. I hope readers will understand this and not judge this record harshly because of it.

Thank you for buying and reading this book. In doing so you are supporting the search for our daughter.

1

GERRY

Before 3 May 2007, I was Kate Healy, a GP married to a consultant cardiologist and the mother of three children. We were a perfectly ordinary family. Boring, even. Since settling down to bring up our longed-for babies, Gerry and I had become such strangers to the fast lane that we were often the butt of good-natured teasing from our friends. We’d give anything to have that boring life back now.

It began for me in Liverpool, where I was born in 1968 – on the first day of an eleven-week bus strike, according to my mum. My parents, too, were Liverpool born and bred, though my dad’s family were originally from Ireland and my mum’s mum from County Durham. My dad, Brian Healy, was a joiner, and served his time initially at Cammell Laird shipbuilders. My mum, Susan, trained as a teacher when I was small – which can’t have been an easy juggling act – but eventually ended up working for the Civil Service. I was an only child, which prompts many people to assume, quite wrongly, that I must have grown up either spoiled or introverted, or both. I certainly never went without food, or clothes, or love, but I was not spoiled in material terms, and if I was a little shy, I don’t remember ever being lonely.

Until I was nearly five, home was a cul-de-sac in Huyton, in the east of the city. It was also home to several big families, and my earliest memories are of fun-filled days playing outside with the neighbours’ kids. After we left Huyton I returned often to join my friends for games of Kerby and Kick the Can in the street. I’m sure the residents didn’t enjoy that as much as we did, and if there is anyone out there who still remembers it less than fondly, I apologize. Better late than never.

A couple of years after my maternal grandmother died, still only in her fifties, we moved in with my grandad in Anfield. Now retired, he had been chief clerk for a firm importing nuts and dried fruits. He had excellent accounting skills but, like many men of his generation, he hadn’t a clue about housework or cooking, and he was struggling without my nana. Yet I remember him always being very smartly turned out, appearing in shirt, tie and waistcoat for church every day. I went regularly, too. I was baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, I attended Catholic schools and went to Mass on Sundays. It was expected of me, it was what I was used to and I didn’t question it.

So my Catholicism and my belief in God were part of the foundations of my life and I didn’t question them, either, or at least, not to any great extent. There were momentary blips when I wrestled with life’s big issues quietly in my mind – God, the universe, my own existence – but for the most part I was satisfied with what I’d come to believe and what I’d been told by the people who mattered to me. I might not have acknowledged my faith on a daily basis – and there were certainly times when church took a back seat, especially in my university days – but it was always there in the background, a source of comfort, refuge and support.

Perhaps because I didn’t have brothers or sisters, I have always been very close to my cousins, and I had plenty of mates, many of whom remain dear to me to this day – one of them, Lynda, a neighbour in Huyton, has known me since I was born. Our mothers were friends then and still are. As well as being shy I was quite sensitive, which aren’t qualities to be envied, as I have discovered, but I loved company and wasn’t one to sit around quietly on my own.

Michelle and Nicky have been my friends since primary school. I met Michelle on our first day at All Saints in Anfield, and we were inseparable from that moment onwards. At the time my parents were planning a family trip to Canada to visit Auntie Norah, my dad’s sister, who had emigrated there, and I was very excited about it. Michelle must have been an immediate hit with me because I asked her on that first day at school if she’d like to come with us. Naturally, she said yes, and she was rather upset when she got home and her mum put paid to that idea. Michelle and I both passed the Eleven-Plus and went on together to Everton Valley (Notre Dame Collegiate School), followed the next year by her sister Lynne, who is ten months younger. They came from a big Catholic family and I spent every Tuesday evening at their house. They came to mine every Friday. In the holidays we were rarely apart, either. I even used to go to the Liverpool FC parties in their street (well, this was the 1970s), which, given that the Healys were dyed-in-the-wool Blues, speaks volumes for my love for Michelle.

Nicky was another All Saints pupil. Although our educational paths diverged when I went on to Everton Valley, she lived very close to me and we remained firm friends. If you asked my mum for her abiding memory of Nicky when we were kids, she’d instantly say, ‘Pickled onion crisps.’ We used to have midnight feasts when Nicky stayed overnight and leave the evidence under the bed. They didn’t all involve pickled onion crisps, but evidently it is that unmistakable aroma that sticks in my mum’s mind from those innocent days. Nicky has always been happy-go-lucky and full of energy. She was a great singer and dancer – she grew up to become a fitness instructor – and we spent many days together making up little dance routines to 1970s disco hits like Baccara’s ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’. I’d like to say we were good but I have a feeling only one of us was. She was a real tonic, Nic. She still is.

At school I was hardworking and conscientious and did well academically. I think the fact that I was sporty, too, and was always picked for the school team – I was netball captain for a while, and played rounders in the summer – was what saved me from being branded a swot. At that stage I didn’t have a particular career in mind. My decision to opt for a degree in medicine emerged gradually from the choices I made after my O-levels. So it wasn’t a lifelong vocation. In my early teens I wanted to become a haematologist and find a cure for leukaemia (God knows where that came from, or how I even had a clue what a haematologist was). I’d also toyed with the idea of training as a vet. When choosing my A-level subjects I wasn’t sure initially whether to go with three sciences or maths, economics and French, and then, when looking ahead to university, whether to aim for medicine or engineering. At both crossroads I could have gone either way.

Although I wanted a fulfilling and worthwhile career I have never been overly ambitious, except in one respect: it was no secret to anyone who knew me that my overriding goal in life was to be a mother, and preferably a mother to many. I certainly wasn’t one of those girls prepared to devote everything I had to climbing to the pinnacle of my profession if it meant sacrificing relationships and babies along the way. That might be viewed as lame by some, though not, I suspect, by most mothers. When I graduated from Dundee University in 1992 my entry in the university yearbook concluded with the line: ‘Prognosis: mathematician and mother of six.’ I achieved neither of these predictions, but I was extremely happy and proud to end up with the best prize imaginable: my three beautiful children.

Dundee University might seem a surprising choice for a Scouse girl with no particular Scottish connections. But back then it was almost a rite of passage for students from English schools to choose a university a decent distance from home, and Dundee came into the equation when it was recommended to me by a good friend who knew somebody studying there. I went up to have a look at the university and was shown round by a very amiable bunch of fourth-year students. It was Guy Fawkes night, I remember, they were all going on to a party afterwards and they invited me to go along with them. There were so many student parties and other social events happening over the next few days that I wound up staying there rather longer than I’d planned. I had a ball and was made to feel really welcome.

So Dundee it was for me. The social scene lived up to its initial promise (partying is practically obligatory for medical students, after all) and I made lots of friends. I had a fantastic time at university and did my best to achieve a balance between work and play, not always successfully. I kept myself fit by playing for the university netball team. After qualifying in 1992, the next step was to complete two six-month stints as a junior house officer, one in general medicine and one in general surgery or orthopaedics (I opted for the latter). On finishing my first six-month post, at King’s Cross Hospital in Dundee, I felt I was ready for a change of scene, and the bright lights of the big city – Glasgow – beckoned.

It was in Glasgow in 1993 that I remember first meeting Gerry McCann. He says that we actually met in 1992, when we were both interviewed for the same job (neither of us got it), but I have no recollection of that. Sorry, Ger. He had qualified in medicine in the same year as me from Glasgow University (Scotland has a much stronger tradition of students going to local universities). Although we didn’t work together early in our careers we moved in the same circles and our paths often crossed in the course of the many social events so beloved of junior doctors, including the infamous doctors’ and nurses’ ‘pay night’ extravaganza at Cleopatra’s nightclub, affectionately known as Clatty Pats.

Gerry was good-looking, confident and outgoing. He also had a reputation as a bit of a lad. But as I got to know him I discovered a natural warmth and honesty, especially when he talked about his family, that revealed an endearing sweetness and vulnerability beneath the potentially intimidating façade.

We had quite a lot in common apart from our profession. We both came from ordinary, working-class Catholic families with Irish roots. Like me, Gerry had attended Catholic schools and gone to Mass on Sundays. Of course, when we first met we didn’t know this about each other and it wouldn’t have entered either of our heads to ask, though our names would have been a pretty strong clue if we’d thought about it. And Gerry’s dad was a joiner, like mine. His mum, Eileen, had been born in Glasgow to Irish parents. She had been sent to live with her grandmother in Donegal shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, returning to Glasgow when it was over. Gerry’s father, Johnny, was from St Johnston in County Donegal, just over the border with Northern Ireland.

Johnny had had a tough start in life. He’d lost his mother, his elder brother and his father before he was sixteen. After spending some time with an uncle in Sligo, Johnny found himself responsible for his father’s pub and a small brother. Having been forced to give up his own education at a Jesuit college, Johnny wanted better for his own children and insisted that they all worked hard to gain the grades to get to university.

Unlike my own family, Gerry’s was large and boisterous. Born in the same year as I was, 1968, he was the youngest of Johnny and Eileen’s five children. He has an elder brother, also Johnny, and there are three sisters in between them – Trisha, Jack and Phil. From Gerry’s stories it sounds as if it was a fun, loud and colourful household, quite mad at times. It must have been hard, too: seven people living in a one-bedroom place in a Glasgow tenement – and that was without the occasional ‘lodger’ with nowhere else to go who’d be offered a berth on the floor. Johnny senior was away working for long periods, and Eileen also worked intermittently, as a shop assistant and later as a cleaner, so ‘wee Gerry’ was often entrusted to the care of his elder siblings. But life in a tenement full of Catholic families and hordes of other kids had more advantages than disadvantages. Everyone was in the same boat, so to the McCann children and those of their neighbours, this was perfectly normal, and nobody felt deprived.