Madeleine by Kate McCann Read Free Book Online

needed help, and when my dad left he was replaced by my mum, Gerry’s mum and a relay of friends and relatives who came out from the UK over the next six weeks to stay with us in our one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment. It was hard for me not being able to pick Madeleine up or play with her properly. All we could do, really, was cuddle on the bed. Still, I was grateful that at least I hadn’t had to remain in hospital.
    My difficult pregnancy wasn’t the only upsetting and stressful event that year. Gerry’s dad had been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in 2003 and was becoming more and more frail. It was terrible for poor Eileen to watch her husband of over forty years shrinking before her eyes. Eileen had not been well herself, either, undergoing surgery and radiotherapy for a salivary gland tumour as well as a hysterectomy. Then the marriage of two very good friends of ours broke down unexpectedly, just before their daughter’s first birthday, and a distressed mother and child came out to stay with us straight afterwards. At the time Gerry described 2004 as our annus horribilis , but if we thought that year was bad, it would pale into insignificance compared with what lay in the future.
    At twenty-seven weeks I began to bleed and had to go back into hospital. We were worried about the babies being born prematurely in the Netherlands. If that happened we would have to stay on after Gerry’s fellowship had ended, with no family support and no income, so it was imperative to get me back home as soon as possible – provided, of course, our specialist felt it was safe enough for me to travel. He did, and on 1 December, a month ahead of schedule, we departed for the UK. On the advice of my consultant I flew, accompanied by my Auntie Janet, with Gerry, Madeleine and most of our belongings following by car and ferry. Gerry then had to return to Holland to complete the final two weeks of his post while a new stream of willing relatives arrived in Queniborough to help Madeleine and me. Another advantage of our early return was that it enabled me to get Madeleine re-established at nursery for a few mornings each week before the babies came rather than afterwards. The last thing I wanted was for her to feel sidelined once the new arrivals made their entrance.
    In those final weeks I cut a bizarre figure, much to the amusement of my friends. I’d be the first to admit that my legs, though they serve their purpose perfectly well, have never been what you might call sturdy (pathetic might be a better word), and they looked even sadder poking out beneath the huge protuberance on top of them. An Easter egg on legs doesn’t do it justice. But I was very proud of my body and its achievements and, once again, in spite of all the tribulations and worries, I’d loved being pregnant. As with Madeleine, we’d asked not to be told the sex of the twins, but having had so many ultrasound scans we’d collected a lot of pictures of them which we couldn’t help poring over. To Gerry and me the evidence seemed clear: two more girls.
    At thirty-nine weeks, the twins were induced, which brought a wry smile to my face, given that I’d just spent three anxious months trying to prevent them from arriving too soon. All the same, I wouldn’t have wanted to put their staying power to the test. If lying on my back for fifteen weeks meant our babies would be safer and stronger, every second was worth it.
    Three days before I went into hospital, Gerry’s Uncle Pat and Aunt Alexis came up from Essex to see us – and within an hour of their arrival, Uncle Pat, an ex-professional footballer, collapsed with a heart attack. When he slumped on Alexis’s shoulder we thought at first he was just messing about. We soon realized he wasn’t. As Gerry phoned for an ambulance and I worried that I was going to need to begin CPR – which would have been pretty difficult given that my belly was the size of a small barn and I could hardly move – a delivery