None of us knows the truth about what happened to Madeleine McCann so why do so many people think they have the right to judge the ‘correct’ way that Kate McCann ’should’ behave?  The endless conflicting leaks from the Portuguese police and the suppositions of the media feed the worst voyeuristic sides of human nature.  It is similar to slowing down on the motorway to look at a car crash.   As ever, it leads to judgement and criticism of what others ‘ought to’ do or have done but this judgement often comes from ignorance of the detailed reality of the situation.

One thing must be true and that is that Kate McCann is in the middle of a nightmare.  None of us knows the truth but surely we do have a legal system that is based on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.  In the meantime she appears to be dealing with the situation by trying to achieve some kind of normality in her daily life with her twins.  As a way of relieving stress this is as good a one as any, and those who criticise the fact that she is able to choose a pair of earrings and a decent set of clothes to wear every day could benefit from considering how important it is to hold yourself together for the sake of those around you and dependent upon you, as well as for yourself.  She could well fear that if she lets all this go then she will completely fall to pieces and she surely needs to be as centred as is possible for the twins, for the search for her daughter and to deal with the pending case against her by the Portuguese police.

Many of those who write and criticise her apparent lack of emotion may not have experienced a sudden death or tragedy in their lives or recognise the numbness that can occur as a result of a traumatic event.  Our first son died suddenly at 2 months’ old and people could have accused me of not seeming to care because I did not cry in front of other people.  But it did not mean to say that I didn’t cry in private: every day for a year and often since; in my car, in my home, in my room.   

 People have compared her behaviour with that of Rhys Jones’s parents, whose grief was evident in their interviews after their son’s murder.  Each person shows and experiences emotion differently and a death has a finality about it that allows a person to grieve wholeheartedly and eventually obtain acceptance and closure.  The daily toll of living with a missing child would surely gnaw away at you in a very different manner.  It might be helpful for people to understand that in psychological terms we all tend to project our own deepest fears, insecurities and experiences on to those who are the subjects of a major media story of this kind.  It happened with Princess Diana; it is happening here.

Perhaps we could all try to accept that there is no perfect way to be, no perfect way to grieve and that judgement of others - particularly of those whom we have never met - is generally inappropriate.  Perhaps we could all try to accept that we may never know what happened that night in Portugal and until we do it is neither appropriate nor helpful to criticise.