QUOTE from ‘The Times’:

“Gerry was in his apartment – Apartment 5a on the ground floor of Block 5 of the Waterside Village Gardens at the Ocean Club – at 7pm. He had a glass of water, then a beer, while the children sat with Kate on the couch having stories with a snack. The children were clearly shattered – the last thing any of them needed was a sedative and, anyway, it was not something the McCanns ever did. They put them to bed after a last story. The twins were asleep virtually the moment they lay down, Madeleine not far behind them. The three children were asleep in the front bedroom overlooking the car park and, beyond it, the street. Madeleine was in the single bed nearest the door. There was an empty bed against the opposite wall, beneath the window. Between the two beds were two travel cots containing the twins: Sean and Amelie.

These days it was rare for Madeleine to wake up at all once she was in bed. If she did, she’d normally wander into her parents’ bed, whether they were there or not. At home in Rothley, sometime earlier, they had begun a star chart for Madeleine staying in her own bed. The chart, still on display in the kitchen, was full of stars. At about 7.30pm, Kate and Gerry showered and changed and sat down just after 8pm to have a quiet glass of the Montana sauvignon blanc that Gerry had bought at the Baptista supermarket, 200 yards down the hill. They had lived and worked in New Zealand for a year and that particular bottle, Montana sauvignon blanc, was their favourite.

[At about 8.30pm], they had walked down to the Tapas bar and were first to the table at the restaurant at 8.35pm. They spent some minutes talking to a couple from Hertfordshire – two more tennis players – at the next table, who were eating with their young children. As they chatted, Gerry thought how lucky he was, his children asleep nearby, he and Kate free to come and enjoy some adult time at the restaurant and not have to sit with their children, as this couple were.

The McCanns sat down after a few minutes and then ordered some wine. The Oldfields were next to arrive, then Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner and, finally, always last, Dave and Fiona Payne with Dianne Webster”.

UNQUOTE.

Gerry reflected. Yes, that was a good account by David Smith. Mind you, he had left out one very important bit, and that was the moment when Madeleine had blurted out to Kate: “Mummy, I’m having so much fun. This is the best day of my life ever”. Madeleine probably said that as Kate was reading her stories.

It was a shame he’d omitted that, because that truly was a clear illustration of just how much the children had enjoyed spending 5½ hours a day in the ‘Kid’s Club’, away from their parents. They had each thrived on it. In fact, he’d felt so reassured about how much the chidren were enjoying themselves that he had no qualms about spending another evening away from the children on the Tapas bar. By tea-time on 3rd May, Madeleine’s query at breakfast-time that morning – about why he and Kate had not been there for her and Sean the previous night whilst they were crying – had become no more than a distant memory. She had probably made it up about her and Sean crying the night before. Children – Madeleine especially – were always doing things to try to get attention.

Gerry now recalled what he was reported on Spanish TV to have told the Portuguese police. Their report had gone:

“Gerry told police: ‘When I arrived at the apartment [around 7pm], I was surprised to see that Kate had taken care of the children and had even had a shower. I sat down with the children and I read them a bedtime story. At 7.15pm we put them to sleep.
At 7.30pm we were sat in the living room and relaxing, Kate with a wine and me with a beer’. At about 7.30pm, Kate and Gerry showered and changed and sat down to have a quiet glass of the sauvignon blanc. They were first to the table at the restaurant at 8.35 and spent some minutes talking to a couple from Hertfordshire – two more tennis players – at the next table, who were eating with their young children”.

Now Gerry really had to think. He drew himself forward and rested his handsome – but furrowed – face on his firm pair of hands. Still no sign of Kate joining him. And the increasing cloud cover matched his mood as he struggled ever harder to reconcile all these conflicting reports – a task made more difficult by the alcohol he had consumed in the restaurant and the bottle of wine he had nearly finished downing after lunch. He sighed as he reflected on further confusion about the facts.

According to David Smith’s account in ‘The Times’, he had ‘hung around on the tennis courts’ waiting for Kate to collect the children from the Kid’s Club and creche and then bring the children on to him afterwards. The report on Spanish TV had said he returned to the apartment at around 7pm and that he was ‘surprised’ to find that Kate had already returned and got the children ready for bed. He felt a touch embarrassed, though that was a strange feeling for him ever to experience. Generally speaking, Gerry didn’t do embarrassment.

He was embarrassed because it all made it look like he and Kate had had a major misunderstanding that day. On the one hand, he claimed to have been hanging around on the tennis courts, nursing his Achilles tendon injury, waiting for Kate to return with the kids. By contrast, the reports on Spanish TV – and which had been recycled in various British newspapers – made it look as though there had been a complete misunderstanding between them, and that Kate had just decided, off her own back, to collect the children, take them back to the apartment, fed them, bath them, change them into their pyjamas ready for bed, and have a shower, all without telling him.

He had to admit it looked bad. And he had to get this exactly right if he was challenged about this discrepancey on one of their forthcoming TV interviews. He tried hard to recall what might have happened.

Suddenly, he had a ‘Eureka!’ moment. Of course! At 4.30pm, Kate had gone off jogging, possibly in a slight huff as maybe she’d got fed up watching him play tennis. That was it! She’d rushed off, and they had, between them, failed to agree about collecting the kids. He had thought she would return to the tennis courts after her jog, and they would then go to the Paraiso as usual and meet up with their friends. Clearly Kate had gone off with a different plan. She had probably gone off for her jog, returned to the apartment, showered, collected the children from the Kid’s Club and creche, gone and had ‘high tea’ somewhere with the nanny, then back to the apartment again, and swiftly got all the children ready for bed by 7.00pm. All without telling him. Perhaps, he thought, she had shouted out something about collecting the kids herself as she rushed off for her jog.

Another possibility was that she had simply forgotten that she was supposed to bring the kids to the tennis court after collecting them from the Kid’s Club and creche. Perhaps she was tired after her jog. Anyway, he realised, that was how to reconcile the two accounts. There had been a simple misundertsanding. Or else Kate had simply forgot.

But as soon as he had solved that problem, another one reared up in his mind. Neither in David Smith’s account, nor in the Spanish TV account, was there any mention of David Payne dropping by the tennis courts at about 6.20pm/6.30pm. There was no mention of his conversation with David, when he had asked him to go to the apartment and see Kate. There was no mention of David having gone to the apartment. Why had this detail been omitted, he wondered? Sometimes even he could forget things, it seemed.

Then again, had he told David to vist Kate to ‘check that she was all right’, or had he simply asked David to ask if Kate and the children were coming down to join him on the tennis court?

And how long had David Payne been at the apartment. One version, fro mdavid himself, was that he had satayed there for up to half-an-hour or so, and had seen Kate getting the children ready for bed, all dressed in their white pyjamas and ‘looking like angels’. Then there was another completely contradictory version that David Payne had called at the apartment, only to find Kate in the middle of showering, with nothing but a towel around her – after which he had quickly left.

These discrepancies were irritating, as it gave material for those dirty, hate-filled blogggers to circulate their libellous theories that none of them were telling the truth about the events of that afternoon and evening.

He couldn’t fully remember why he had asked David Payne to visit the apartment. As for what had happened when David Payne had visited the apartment, perhaps David Payne had simply forgotten what had happened. Perhaps he had a form of amnesia about the events of that afternoon and evening. And maybe the same was true of Kate. After all, in her retrospective diary entry for 3rd May, she had not even mentioned David Payne coming to visit the apartment, let alone whether he’d knocked on the apartment door whilst she was showering, or had stayed for half-an-hour. Yes, that was it, they had all forgotten the details of that day. And now, they couldn’t remember. Yes, he thought to himself more cheerfully, that should do it. If there are any awkward discrepancies, we’ll say we ‘can’t remember’.

There was one other thing about that Spanish TV report, which papers like the Daily Mail had recycled. He was quoted as saying: “At 7.15pm we put them to sleep”. Had he really said that? Put them to sleep? Why, it made it sound as if…as if… Gerry could scarcely bring himself to think about what those words of his could mean. He also recalled that on another occasion, Kate had spoken about ‘putting the children down’ for the night. ‘Put them to sleep’, he decided, must clearly have been a gross mis-translation of what he had actually said on Spanish TV. And, disgracefully, papers like the Daily Mail had negligently recycled this appalling mis-translation.

Gerry’s mind, still focussed on covering every possible contradiction, discrepancy, or ‘minor inconsistencies’ as he liked to call them, wondered why Kate had showered twice. He was quoted as saying that “I was surprised to see that Kate had taken care of the children and had even had a shower”, and then the article had continued: “At about 7.30pm, Kate and Gerry showered…” And in one of his versions, David Payne had said he had interrupted Kate whilst she was taking a shower. Did Kate have two showers, or only one? It was so hard to remember after all this time. Why would Kate need to take two showers in less than an hour or so? Perhaps, he thought, he had got it wrong again. Perhaps it was only he that showered at 7.30pm? Yes, let’s say that, he concluded.

He tried to move forward in his mind to the moment when he and Kate had got themselves ready for the Tapas bar at around 8.30pm, and had locked their apartment door – or left it unlocked, as the case may be – and taken their 90-second stroll down to the Ocean Club.

But he was still troubled by some of those ‘minor inconsistencies’. For example, one version of events said that Kate had read the children their bedtime stories. In anotner version, it was him. His brow furrowed once again as his mind wrestled and grappled and contorted in a vain effort to recall which of them had read those bedtime stories. Or perhaps neither of them had?

by ‘Montmorillonite’ – COPYRIGHT