Recently, I met Kate McCann for the very first time. She looks very different to the tanned, healthy young woman we saw in those first reports from Portugal. She is extremely thin, tired and understandably carries an enormous sadness in her eyes. She held herself with gracefulness and poise but she is without doubt a woman who is incomplete.
As we said goodbye I wished her well in the search for her daughter and I am ashamed to say that in my sadness for her situation and the knowledge that it could so easily be me, I filled up with tears. This thoroughly decent and kind woman, who has lost so much, put her arms around me and comforted me. How could I possibly understand what she has gone through, is still going through and will continue to go through until her daughter is back home?
Losing my daughter for a few moments in a busy town centre is just a nasty taste of what she has endured every single day for almost four years. Yet she was kind enough to comfort me.
