Angela Mollard: Madeleine McCann mystery still haunts me as a mum
Until she became a mother, Angela Mollard didn’t understand the fierce and consuming love a parent has for a child. Her own daughter was born the same year as missing girl Madeleine McCann and 13 years on, she still feels sorrow for Gerry and Kate McCann as they search for answers.
Opinion
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There’s a scene in the Network 10 series The Secrets She Keeps where mother Meghan Shaughnessy is curled in the foetal position sobbing after her newborn baby has been snatched from the hospital.
It’s harrowing and dramatic television, all the more so because the six-part series is based on one of the most distressing kidnappings in modern times. I know because I covered the story for every one of the 17 long days it took for the baby to be found.
The stealing of baby Abbie Humphries from a British hospital by a woman posing as a nurse reverberated around the world when it occurred back in 1994, but for me, working as a young journalist for a Fleet Street newspaper, it was a frustrating story to report.
There were few leads, the parents made a couple of appeals, but then had nothing more to add. Even in those days before the 24/7 news cycle editors would become impatient when there were no developments to deliver to a readership on tenterhooks.
But what I realised watching the clever drama, which features Downton Abbey star Laura Carmichael as the baby-snatcher, was that I had not truly appreciated what Karen and Roger Humphries were feeling as they struggled with the horror of not knowing whether their baby was dead or alive.
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I was 26, not yet a mother, and as I attended daily police briefings I had no understanding of what it meant to grow a child in your body and finally gaze at it in wonderment. Likewise, I had no knowledge of the afterbirth pains that occur as a womb shrinks back to its normal size, or the tautness of a breast filled with milk.
Mostly, though, I didn’t understand the love; the fierce, consuming, infinitely stretched-out love that a parent has for a child.
I largely refrain from using the phrase “as a mother”, particularly in the context of setting my own experiences apart from women who are not mothers.
Being a mother does not imbue you with extra empathy or make you saintlier or specially attuned to the horrors of the world. We all feel because it is part of the human condition.
But missing children are something else. It was only when I had a child of my own that I experienced that particular chill that reaches into your chest and strangles your heart.
It happened when my toddler daughter stepped in front of a car and again when her little sister wandered off in a park. It also happened when three-year-old Madeleine McCann went missing in 2007.
My daughter was born the same year as Madeleine and, consequently, was the same age as the little girl when she went missing. Few stories are more affecting than Gerry and Kate McCann’s endless not knowing.
Every time there’s been an update or a new lead I’ve wondered what it must be like for them to have their little girl forever frozen in time. The image of them holding a computer-generated photo of what their daughter would’ve looked like aged nine was heartbreaking.
My daughter, at the same age, was singing Taylor Swift songs, making dumplings and playing with her pet rat.
A couple of months ago as Madeleine’s birthday approached, the McCanns told of how the pain never leaves them: “Her 17th birthday is to follow in the next couple of weeks — the latter tangibly, painfully, bringing it home to us what we have missed and continue to miss as a family.”
Yet still the cruelty continues. Just last month the couple were forced to deny reports that a German prosecutor had sent them a letter confirming their daughter was dead.
The news was “FALSE”, they posted on the Find Madeleine website in exasperated capital letters, clearly distressed that such misinformation could once again hinder the investigation.
How the McCanns are still together and still standing is remarkable. They have endured the worst thing that can happen to a human being and if that tragedy wasn’t enough they’ve been suspects, accused of negligent parenting and become the victims of a flawed investigation.
The McCanns will probably never know the peace and relief of Karen and Roger Humphries.
Two-and-a-half weeks after their baby was snatched, she was found with a disturbed young woman who had faked a pregnancy to save a failing relationship.
I remember clearly the huge smiles as the couple held their blonde-haired baby in her summer dress.
“God, we’ll be covering her birthdays for the rest of her life,” quipped a colleague.
But that wasn’t the case. When Abbie was 10 her family moved to New Zealand for anonymity and a fresh start.
Recently the married 25-year-old was watching The Secrets She Keeps when she realised the drama was about the first 17 days of her life. It had “brought up a lot of emotions” for her family, she said.
We can only hope the McCanns eventually learn what happened to Madeleine.
German police, instead of issuing grandstanding updates where they announce they “assume” she is dead, need to find the clue that solves this case once and for all.
Denied so much, the very least the McCanns deserve is closure.
ANGELA LOVES …
DOOR HANDLE HACK
I’ve been looking at contemporary timber door handles for my new hallway cupboards but they’re insanely expensive, which is why I love this cheap hack I found on Facebook. Buy a Kmart glass canister, cut the lid in half, stain to the colour of your choice and screw it on to your cabinetry. Genius.
EYELASH TINT
Every couple of months for most of my adult life I’ve paid a salon to tint my eyelashes, but last week I bought a $12.99 kit and did it myself. It was so easy and with 12 applications in the kit my home salon works out at $1 a pop.
PODCAST
Brene Brown’s books have a cult following but I’ve just started listening to her podcast, Unlocking Us. It’s life-changing and I’d recommend starting with her interviews
with Dr Vivek Murthy on loneliness and Mr Marc Brackett on feelings. Powerful and transformative.