Madeleine McCann: Grandparents speak out on first anniversary of abduction

Apr 28 2008 by Paddy Shennan

IN the first of a two-part series, to mark the first anniversary of the abduction of Madeleine McCann, Paddy Shennan talks to her Liverpool-based grandparents, Brian and Susan Healy

IT’S A tough question to ask and an almost impossible one to answer.

As they approach the anniversary of the disappearance of their first grandchild, Madeleine McCann’s grandparents bravely face up to the horrendous possibility of their worst nightmare coming heartbreakingly true.

For Brian and Susan Healy, who have spent the past 12 months doing all they can for Madeleine and all they can for her mother, their only child, Kate, the agony and the anguish can only intensify on the anniversary no one wants to see come round.

We are sitting in their suburban home in a quiet, tree-lined street off busy Allerton Road, a house where the gates remain bedecked with yellow and green ribbons. A house where the first and last thing you see, as you enter and leave, is a framed photograph of their smiling granddaughter, Madeleine, in her Everton top.

An ordinary family photograph which is now, for all the wrong reasons, familiar to millions of people around the world.

It is here, then, in this seemingly unremarkable, ordinary and everyday world, that these devoted parents and grandparents fight a daily battle against thinking the unthinkable and saying the unsayable.

So do they now, after all this time, believe little Madeleine is dead and, if she is, would they rather face this devastating fact – or continue living in ignorance, with only their daily turmoil and torment for company?

Susan, 62, takes a deep breath, and says: "I think Kate feels she needs to know what’s happened to Madeleine, because her imagination . . ."

Her voice trails away as the enormity of what she is saying hits home, before she adds, softly and sadly: "Kate said ‘If Madeleine is dead I need to know’. That goes for us as well."

But explaining the trap they fear falling into, Brian, 68, says: "If you say ‘We want a resolution’ you are tempting fate . . . If I was talking about any other child, I would probably think ‘She’s gone’. But it’s Madeleine, and so we have hope."

Susan, as if grasping hold of that most powerful of four-letter words, stresses: "We still have a lot of hope, because we have no reason not to have.

"Sometimes when I’m having a bad time – which has been most of the time recently – I would be quite fearful of the chances of Madeleine being found alive. Then I’ll read something or speak to someone who will say ‘You WILL get her back, you know’. That makes me feel a bit ashamed, so I pull myself together."

And Kate? Is she, as some newspapers have suggested, on the verge of falling apart?

Susan says: "I can’t believe how strong Kate is. I just don’t know where she gets this strength from. Prayer does give you strength. If nothing else it’s something that has kept us going . . . prayer and the support of other people.

"I do fear for the future, of course I do. But as for her appearance now, Kate’s always been thin and I don’t think she’s any thinner than before. I’ve looked at pictures in the early days when people said how cool she looks and, to me, she looks in anguish.

"I think, if people can’t see the anguish in her face, they are blind, they really are.

"No one takes less time on themselves than Kate. She’s not into make-up. She comes across in pictures quite well. She looks very attractive, though she wouldn’t think that.