Portuguese Police will not go ahead with a reconstruction of the night Madeleine McCann disappeared.

Kate and Gerry McCann had not planned to return to Portugal for the reconstruction of the night Madeleine disappeared

According to Sky News reports, the controversial plan was abandoned after several members of the ‘Tapas Seven’ were not able to attend.

Kate and Gerry McCann had already decided not to return to Portugal for the reconstruction of the night of their daughter went missing.

The couple said the re-enactment would do “absolutely nothing” to help find their daughter, who was three when she vanished from the family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007.

Mr and Mrs McCann, who are arguidos or suspects in their daughter’s disappearance, had been asked by Portuguese police to return to the Algarve along with the seven friends on holiday with them at the time.

Detectives wanted to stage a reconstruction at the Ocean Club complex where the McCanns were dining, leaving Madeleine and her younger siblings in the unlocked apartment nearby.

But the couple, from Rothley in Leicestershire, have decided not to go back.

A source close to the McCanns said: “There are no plans for Kate and Gerry and their friends to return to Portugal. They have all indicated their intentions to the police.

“The reconstruction will only take place if Kate and Gerry and their friends agree to take part. If they don’t agree it will not happen.

“Kate and Gerry have had grave reservations about the value of it. If the reconstruction was going to help Madeleine, nothing in the world would stop them taking part.

“But Kate and Gerry and their friends cannot see the point of all the disruption it would cause to their busy work schedules and families if, as they believe, it will do absolutely nothing to help find Madeleine.”

The couple’s spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “Kate and Gerry and their friends remain committed to doing anything to help find Madeleine.

“I don’t want to comment on what they have told police but, if they do not return to Portugal, it is because they feel it offers no value and no assistance in finding Madeleine.”

Mr Mitchell said that if the reconstruction was televised with the chance of bringing in new leads the McCanns and their friends would agree to do it.

He went on: “They would welcome a Crimewatch-style reconstruction which is properly broadcast for millions of people to see and could generate important new leads and fresh information.”

But Portuguese police said they did not want the reconstruction to be filmed.

Frustrated at not being able to offer more assistance to the parents of Madeleine McCann, Lady Meyer has set her sights on co-ordinating the search for abducted children.

The wife of our former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, tells me that she is trying to persuade Boris Johnson to establish a headquarters for such searches.

“There are hundreds of charities in London who offer services to missing or abducted children,” she said at the launch of Rachel Johnson’s novel Shire Hell. “I’m proposing one centre of excellence which amalgamates all the charities and would be much more efficient in helping people.”

Catherine Meyer speaks from experience: she set up the charity Parents and Children Together after her former husband denied her access to her two sons.

A reconstruction of the night Madeleine McCann went missing may still go ahead, her parents’ Portuguese lawyer has said.

Doubts were raised after Kate and Gerry McCann publicly questioned the value of such an exercise so long after their daughter vanished.

But Rogerio Alves said there were “strong indications” that it could take place in the next two weeks.

Speaking at a police conference in Faro in the Algarve, he said: “We have little faith in the benefit of this step and how it can help to discover what happened to Madeleine. But there are strong indications it will go ahead.”

Portuguese detectives want Mr and Mrs McCann, from Rothley in Leicestershire, to return to the Algarve to re-enact the night of May 3 last year when their eldest child disappeared from their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.

They have also asked the couple’s seven friends who dined with them at the nearby tapas bar when Madeleine vanished to go back to Portugal, but they are also thought to be hesitant about returning.

Clarence Mitchell, the McCann’s spokesman, said nothing had been decided.

“The discussions about the possible visit by all nine are still ongoing,” he said. “It is down to the friends – as well as Kate and Gerry – to decide whether they want to go back.

“Of course, Kate and Gerry would do anything they could if they thought it would help find their daughter.

“There are some serious questions surrounding the value of the proposed exercise and only when satisfactory answers have come in and all the friends are happy will it happen.”

A source close to the McCanns, who are still suspects or arguidos in their daughter’s disappearance, said the couple could not understand why a reconstruction was being arranged now, more than a year on.

“It is not going to be televised, so it won’t throw up any new leads outside the police investigation,” said the source. “There are physical differences more than a year on, such as the hedgerows are a different height, for example.

“And has anyone given any thought to how Kate might feel about taking part in a reconstruction with another child playing her daughter?”

The debate over the reconstruction came as the judge in charge of the case decided to extend the secrecy laws surrounding the files for another three months.

This means the McCanns will keep their arguido status until August 15 at the earliest.

Mr Alves said he was not surprised about the extension: “It seems normal to me, I expected it.

“What the judicial secrecy means in this case is that a mother and father are forbidden access to the knowledge they would like to have about what the police are doing to discover something fundamental for them – what happened to their daughter.”

Madeleine McCann’s mother has asked the community to “pray like mad” during a church service to mark the first anniversary of her daughter going missing.

Mrs McCann also expressed her gratitude to the congregation during a 30-minute service at St Mary and St John church, near their home in Rothley, Lancashire, thanking them for their prayers and support.

She said that she and her husband Gerry would not have managed without their help.

She told the congregation to “keep praying, pray like mad” for the four-year-old.

Speaking after the service on behalf of the family, Madeleine’s great uncle, Brian Kennedy, said: “We would like to thank all the members of the churches here in Rothley and also those who are of no particular church for joining us today to remember the world’s missing children and especially, of course, our own Madeleine.

“This is a difficult week and we have had many kind messages from residents here and from around the country which have been a great help.

“We have invited people of all the many faiths here to pray for these children and their families in their own places of worship on the various days they keep and we would like them to know how much their prayers are appreciated.”

The McCanns had initially planned to spend the day privately, but Mrs McCann, a devout Catholic, decided she wanted to attend the Church of England service.

The service comes as Portugal’s most senior detective said police were still gathering evidence in their investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.

Alipio Ribeiro told the Portuguese new agency Lusa that officials had not yet decided whether to bring charges or drop the investigation.

“At this stage nothing has been determined regarding possible charges or closing the case,” he said. “The Policia Judiciaria continues to gather and analyze all available evidence.”

Today’s painful milestone follows several days of intensive press and television interviews by Kate and gerry McCann, who have mounted a 12-month global campaign to ensure Madeleine does not become just another statistic on the list of disappeared youngsters. The pair continue to lobby for a Europe wide alert system for missing children.

But there are signs they may now try to return to some kind of normality, if only for the sake of their other children, three-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

“We take it day by day,” said Mr McCann, 39. “We will do what’s right for ourselves and the twins.”

Mrs McCann said: “It’s a difficult day, but … you kind of think it’s just another day, really. I don’t think we’ll know until the morning what feels right.”

Friends and supporters of the McCann’s are planning to light candles, lights and lanterns around the country between 9.15pm and 10pm tonight – the time Kate and Gerry McCann say their daughter, just a few days shy of her fourth birthday, was abducted from their holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz.

The group Helping to Find Madeleine has urged people to “light the way home” for the her and already Everton Football Club has said it will shine its floodlights into the sky. Mrs McCann is an Everton supporter and one of the last photographs taken of her daughter showed her in the club’s blue shirt.

The 40-year-old GP said: “We think lighting a candle or lantern is a lovely idea. We are very grateful to everyone who remembers Madeleine at this time.”

Mr McCann’s brother John and other relatives are travelling to Praia da Luz on the couple’s behalf, and will attend a vigil in the Algarve town’s Church of Our Lady of Light. Here photographs of Madeleine have been displayed near a candle which has been kept lit for almost a year. Mrs McCann has written a message for the congregation which will be read out by her brother.

Madeleine’s parents have not been back to Portugal since being made official suspects in her disappearance last September.

Meanwhile the Archbishop of York has written a prayer to mark Madeleine’s disappearance from the Ocean Club apartment, where she and the twins had been left for the evening by Mr and Mrs McCanns.

Dr John Sentamu says a daily prayer for Madeleine and keeps a candle burning next to a picture of her.

His prayer reads: “Father God, we pray for Madeleine McCann, keep her safe and take away her fear and anxiety.

“May your holy angels guard and protect her. We pray that she may be reunited with those who love her. Give hope to all her loved ones and hear our cry for her safe return.”

* The McCanns have appealed for anyone with evidence to call their private investigators on 0845 8384699.

The parents of Madeleine McCann have told how it was only a last-minute change of plan that led them to leave their children alone on the night their daughter disappeared.

Kate and Gerry McCann said that they had planned to take the family to The Millennium, a restaurant half a mile away. But because Madeleine and their twins, Sean and Amelie, were tired they decided to put them to bed and eat at the tapas restaurant near their apartment.

They sat down at 9pm and within an hour Madeleine had vanished.

The couple speak about their change of heart during a two-hour documentary, Madeleine, One Year On, Campaign for Change to be televised tonight.

Mrs McCann’s mother, Susan Healy, 62, from Liverpool, said she wanted to “shake” them both for leaving her granddaughter alone.

“I could shake all of them, every single one of them,” she said. “You find yourself over and over again in your head thinking: ‘Why did they think it would be all right?’”

The documentary, filmed over four months, focuses on how the McCanns have coped and their campaign for the introduction of a Europe-wide Amber Alert early warning system for missing children used successfully in the US.

They talk frankly about their feelings, with Mrs McCann regularly breaking down.

On Madeleine’s disappearance

Mr McCann said that, as the search of the Mark Warner holiday complex in Praia da Luz began, he was gripped by “absolute devastation and total, just total emotion”.

He said: “Everyone knows the fear, fear for your daughter, fear for yourself, fear for your family, fear for everything and that horrible kind of adrenalin: fight, flight.”

Mrs McCann stayed in a bedroom praying. She said: “It was really cold. I knew what pyjamas she had on and I just thought she’s going to be freezing. And it was just dark and dark and every minute seemed like an hour.

“Obviously, we were up all night and just waited for the first bit of light at six o’clock.”

Mr McCann added: “And then we went out searching, the two of us. We were saying over and over again just let her be found, let her be found.”

With no sign of Madeleine, police suspicions soon turned on the couple and the theory they had killed Madeleine by accident and hid her body. In August, they were declared arguidos or persons of interest to the inquiry.

On being made suspects

Mrs McCann said the initial reaction was fury that the focus had been taken away from the hunt for Madeleine.

She said: “As soon as I realised the theory that Madeleine was dead and that we’d been involved, it just hit home: they haven’t been looking for Madeleine. I just felt yet again my daughter has had such a disservice.

“I started thinking ‘if they’re saying about us being involved with Madeleine, you know it’s not too long before they say what about Sean and Amelie?’”

She said she thought of herself as a “lioness and her cubs”, saying: “I’d do whatever it took to protect them.”

It emerged yesterday that their status as arguidos will remain in place for a further three months.

On hate mail

The McCanns have boxes marked “nutty” and “nasty” in which to file hate mail. One was a Christmas card which read in part: “Gerry and Kate, how can you use the money given by poor people in good faith to pay your mortgage on your mansion. You ******* thieving bastards. Your brat is dead because of your drunken arrogance. Shame on you. I curse you and your family to suffer forever. You are scum.”

On the Amber Alert system

Mr McCann said they felt a “moral obligation” to improve the “haphazard and disorganised” response to missing children in Europe.

He said: “If you find yourself in that horrible situation we did, you want to know a photograph’s gone out, a description, borders are being alerted and there is the best possible chance of finding that child quickly.”

On the future

Mrs McCann said they will be forever driven in their search for Madeleine until they had proof she was dead.

She said: “We’re never going to get to a day where you think OK we’ve tried everything now, (that) we’re exhausted and need to start living. I can’t imagine ever getting to that day.

“I just think we need to know because the thought of living like this for another 40 years isn’t exactly a happy prospect.”

Madeleine, One Year On, Campaign for Change is on ITV1 on Wednesday, April 30 at 8pm.

Kate and Gerry McCann are deeply hurt by the “disgraceful” way in which tourists are making tours to visit the spot where their daughter Madeleine disappeared, a friend has said.

Locals in Praia da Luz are fed up with the grisly fascination

Scores of people favouring “ghoul tourism” are turning up in Praia da Luz each week on unofficial tours to visit all the places which have become so well known since the little girl vanished almost a year ago.

They go to the Ocean Club apartment where the little girl was last seen and pose for photographs before visiting the church where Mr and Mrs McCann prayed for her safe return.

They even stop outside the house of Robert Murat, 34, who was made a suspect 12 days after Madeleine went missing.

A friend of Mr and Mrs McCann said: “If they are doing that it’s disgraceful, I think people should have better things to do with their time – what is the point?

“It is offensive and hurtful and it is disrespectful to Madeleine.”

Pamela Fenn, 81, who lives above apartment 5a where the McCanns stayed, said: “It’s sick, you get loads of them. There was a group of about 20 here on Saturday. You can’t believe it. Can you imagine wanting to come and do that?

“They stand outside the apartment talking and then in front of the window with their children and have photographs taken.

“It happens all the time but it is worst at the weekend, particularly Saturday.”

Deborah Crawford, who works at The Bull pub, said locals were fed up with the grisly fascination“It happens all the time but it is worst at the weekend, particularly Saturday: “Tourists are always asking about the case.

“Every day someone will ask for directions to the McCanns’ apartment so they can go up for a nosey. It’s a bit sick.

“They’ve been running coach tours just to see the place where it all happened – a busload of older people came down from northern Portugal. It’s unbelievable.”

Staff at the Ocean Club said people take photographs of the tapas restaurant where Mr and Mrs McCann dined with friends on the night Madeleine went missing.

One employee said: “After looking at the apartment they go to the main road where there is a clear view over the pool.

“The bus comes and parks outside the church and lots of them get off and they come up here in a big group.

“You always get the odd one or two people who want to know where Madeleine was taken, but these are big groups, 20, 30, 40 people.

“I would love to find out who is organising it so we could ask them to stop.”

As media attention intensifies as the anniversary approaches, Mr Murat’s lawyer Francisco Pagarete has advised him to leave Praia da Luz for a few days.

Mr and Mrs McCann will launch a media offensive today (thurs) with interviews in London with most of the major television stations.

On Saturday, Mr McCann’s brother John, sister Trish Cameron and her husband Sandy are flying to Portugal to attend a mass at the church.

Anglican vicar Father Haynes Hubbard – who became close to the McCanns – and Catholic priest Father Jose Manuel Pacheco will take turns to lead the service.

Photographs of Madeleine will be on display and Mrs McCann is expected to send a letter to be read during the vigil.

Kate McCann’s mother says the only way her daughter can cope ‘is by trying 100 per cent to get Madeleine back’

Susan Healy, who travelled to Portugal as soon as she heard about her grandaughter’s disappearance, said the first question she asked the couple was “where were you?”.

Kate McCann’s mother says the only way her daughter can cope ‘is by trying 100 per cent to get Madeleine back’

Speaking just days before the first anniversary of the night Madeleine vanished, Mrs Healy, 62, said it was a question she had repeatedly asked herself.

“You find yourself over and over again in your head thinking: ‘Why did they think it would be all right?’” she said.

“Why did they think – all of them – it was OK to do this? I think they were beguiled into thinking it was OK – but there was no CCTV, no security.

“There is this acceptance among couples with young children, like Kate and Gerry and their friends, that these are good resorts and safe environments. “I could shake all of them, every single one of them.”

Mrs Healy, from Allerton in Liverpool, said the McCanns have had to live with the fact that they left Madeleine in an unlocked apartment while they went for dinner.

“At the end of the day they thought they had taken adequate provision… no one looks after their children better than Kate and Gerry. That’s why it’s so amazing they can be in this situation.”

Reports have been circulating in Portugal that the couple may be prosecuted for neglect, a claim strongly rejected by the couple’s spokesman Clarence Mitchell.

“That rumour has been floating around for a while,” he said.

“If that did happen, why now? Why should they face such a charge now given that nothing has changed?

“If that charge was put to them, it would be defended robustly. The legal advice that they have received is that what they did that night with regular checks on the children was part of reasonable parenting.

“They have committed no offence under any law in Portugal or the UK.”

Mrs Healy recalled the moment she heard that Madeleine was gone – in a late night telephone call from Mr McCann.

“It was about 11.30ish when Gerry rang,” she told the Liverpool Echo.

“I picked up the phone, but the last thing I expected was that it was going to be Gerry on the other end.

He said something like ‘It’s a disaster’. I was grappling to understand ‘disaster’.

“His next words were ‘Madeleine has been abducted from her bed in the apartment’. I said ‘No, Gerry’. I asked him ‘Where were you?’”

She and her husband Brian packed immediately and flew to the Algarve to be with their daughter, their only child.

“I remember, after we got to the hotel complex, looking at the little paddling pool and all the children there. I was thinking ‘This time yesterday, Madeleine was playing there’.

“I don’t know who I hugged first, but I’ll never forget how Kate and Gerry were that day – they were absolutely wailing.”

Mr Healy added: “I remember Kate’s first words to me – I’ll never forget them.

She said: ‘She’ll be so frightened.’”

Mrs Healy has been staunch defender of her daughter and has spoken out in the past about how Mrs McCann has felt persecuted by parts of the media.

Last October, she claimed that her daughter told her: “If I weighed another two stone, had a bigger bosom and looked more maternal, people would be more sympathetic.”

But Mrs Healy said her real anger came when the McCanns were made suspects – or arguidos – in Madeleine’s disappearance.

“They had told the police they were going to come home. I think that moved things on for the police and they told Kate and Gerry they wanted to question them again.

“Gerry did ring to warn us that they were likely to be made arguidos, I think it was a few days before. I nearly had a dicky fit. I was amazed and angry. Very angry.”

Robert Murat, the British expatriate made a formal suspect over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, has begun one of the largest libel claims in the history of British media.

The 34-year-old, who lived close to the Portugal apartment where the missing girl was last seen, has launched libel proceedings against 11 newspapers and one television network.

It is the largest number of separate libel claims made against the British media by one person on the same issue.

If he is successful, media lawyers believe Mr Murat could receive more than £2 million.

He and his family are believed to be particularly aggrieved by a number of reports in the aftermath of his being made an arguido – or official suspect – which repeated claims made by Portuguese media.

In at least one case – the false allegation that there were pornographic images on his computer – the Portuguese media later published corrections.

A relative of Mr Murat said the British reports had left “unfair stains on the name of a man against whom there is not a shred of evidence”.

In a statement, London-based law firm Simons Muirhead and Burton said that it “is representing Robert Murat in respect of a number of libel actions against Sky, The Daily Express, The Sunday Express, The Daily Star, The Daily Mail, The Evening Standard, The Metro, The Daily Mirror, The News of the World, The Sun and The Scotsman.”

It added: “At this time neither the firm nor its client will be making any comment.”

Media lawyer and litigation expert Caroline Kean, of media law specialists Wiggin, said that Mr Murat could receive a record payout if he successfully argued that the articles implied that he was involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.

She said: “You could expect at least £200,000 per paper, per claim, and that would exceed £2 million.”

Mr Murat was questioned by police on May 14, 2007, less than two weeks after Madeleine’s disappearance from the holiday resort of Praia da Luz, and was subsequently made an arguido.

He has always strongly protested his innocence.

Police recently returned a computer, clothing and other items taken from the home he shares with his mother, just yards from the apartment in which the McCanns were staying.

Mr Murat has also been given permission to travel to England to visit his three-year-old daughter, which has raised the family’s hopes that his arguido status will soon be lifted.

The only other formal suspects in the case are Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann.

Last month Express Newspapers printed front-page apologies to the McCanns on four national newspapers for running stories suggesting they were involved in their daughter’s disappearance.

The newspaper company also paid £550,000 into the Find Madeleine fund.

Madeleine McCann complained to her mother after she was left crying and alone on the night before she disappeared, leaked police documents have disclosed.

The little girl, then aged three, spoke to Kate McCann at breakfast the following morning and said: “Mummy, why didn’t you come when we were crying last night?”

The question prompted Mrs McCann and her husband Gerry to discuss keeping a closer on eye on their children. However, just a few hours after that conversation, Madeleine vanished from their holiday apartment in the Algarve.

Friends said they now believe Madeleine’s comment could even be a clue that an intruder was in the flat on the night before her disappearance and that they briefly disturbed her before fleeing.

The detailed revelations about Kate and her husband Gerry McCann’s last day with Madeleine emerged during the couple’s trip to Brussels on Thursday where they called for the establishment of a missing child alert system.

However, Mr and Mrs McCann were furious that their witness statements – the subject of Portuguese secrecy laws – were released on the same day that they tried to promote child welfare and safety.

Their spokesman Clarence Mitchell said they were angry and disappointed at the leaks, saying: “The only reason this has come out is because of Kate and Gerry’s utter honesty in their original statements.

“It is very curious that this is being released now, having been sitting in the police files for 11 months. The timing of this is frankly suspicious.”

Mr Mitchell demanded an internal police inquiry in Portugal into how the leak occurred: “We would be very interested to know what the Portuguese justice minister would say about how this has emerged from the police files on the day that it has, in the way that it has.

“Kate and Gerry have been nothing but honest and open and they have been the victims of leaks and smears.”

A friend of the couple went further, describing the leak as a “blatantly cynical attempt to smear them”.

“The minute that you talk about Madeleine crying is the minutes that the vultures will move in and this is why this has been leaked.”

He said the McCanns were conducting half hourly checks on Madeleine, so they were surprised to learn that she had been crying.

“It wasn’t really a complaint or a scolding from Madeleine, it was a comment in the morning.”

Mr and Mrs McCann, who are suspects in their daughter’s disappearance but have not been accused of any wrong-doing, have never discussed the events of the day of her disappearance – May 3 last year – because of secrecy laws.

But in extracts read out on Spanish broadcaster Telecinco’s late morning programme El Programa de Ana Rosa, it emerged that Mrs McCann had told police about a conversation she had with Madeleine on the morning she disappeared.

The little girl, then aged three, spoke to her mother because she had left her and twins Sean and Amelie alone in the night. Mrs McCann’s statement said: “While we were having breakfast, Madeleine said: ‘Mummy, why didn’t you come when we were crying last night?’.

“Gerry and I spoke for a couple of minutes and agreed to keep a closer watch over the children.”

After Madeleine’s disappearance, Mr and Mrs McCann were criticised for leaving their children while their dined at a tapas restaurant nearby and have spoken of their guilt for leaving them alone.

In his witness statement, Mr McCann told police that workmen had gone into their holiday apartment two days before Madeleine vanished to fix a broken window shutter in the main bedroom.

He told police he had checked on Madeleine and the twins at around 9pm on May 3. “She was breathing softly and I thought how beautiful she looked. I thought it was quite hot and I didn’t need to cover her up.”

He went on: “Kate came running to the bar and said Madeleine’s not there, someone has taken her.”

“I thought it couldn’t be and ran towards the apartment along the same route as always. I looked everywhere.

“I returned to the children room I tried to think what could have happened. To my surprise I realised I could lift up the window shutters without effort and almost without making noise.”

The disclosures came as the McCanns announced they would not go back to Portugal to mark the anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance.

Because they do not believe they will be cleared of their arguido status before May 3, they said they will not return to Praia da Luz for the anniversary.

Portuguese detectives want the McCanns to go to the Algarve for a reconstruction but the couple’s lawyers are concerned about being summoned back to Portugal.

The McCanns are reluctant to go until the “cloud of suspicion” surrounding them is lifted.

Mr McCann, 39, said: “We do not know how long we are going to be arguidos.

“The reconstruction is still under discussion. We are not quite sure what form it is going to take, whether it will be a Crimewatch style programme with actors.

“We support anything that would jog people’s memories, but we will certainly not go back on May 3.”

Mr and Mrs McCann went to Belgium to garner support for the missing child alert system.

Addressing MEPs at the European Parliament, Mrs McCann, 40, said she believed such a system might have helped find their daughter.

“I believe the chances of recovering Madeleine would have been higher, it would have improved our chances.

“I am unable to convey to you just how totally devastating Madeleine’s abduction was, it has been totally awful.”

Mrs McCann held a photograph of Madeleine as she made her address to the European parliament and kept her daughter’s favourite toy Cuddle Cat in her handbag

“If anyone wanted to inflict the maximum pain on us, they certainly achieved that,” she said. “But that pales into insignificance when you think of what Madeleine has been through – the fear, absolute fear that she has had to endure.

“We implore you to support our declaration. Please do not wait for another child and family to suffer as we have.”

Novelist Lionel Shriver strongly believes that the media has covered the Madeleine McCann case as if it were a work of fiction, distorting facts and demonising characters. And a year on, the family is paying the price.

Like any novelist, I’m a sucker for a good story. Yet fiction and non-fiction are shelved in separate sections of a bookshop for good reason. However imaginative its variations, fiction conforms to amazingly strict narrative criteria.

Novels begin with an instigating event, develop complications and plot tributaries, build to climax and proceed to a swift, satisfying resolution. Novels employ heroes and villains, red herrings and suspense. Even contemporary literary novels still need to make a point or teach a lesson. And all novels require an element of surprise.

Gerry and Kate McCann reading a statement in Praia da Luz on Saturday May 5, 2007. Madeleine went missing on the Thursday night

Reality is not always so obliging. Sometimes the plot lacks an obvious bad guy or plausible hero. Faithful to the facts, non-fiction cannot always build to an exhilarating climax, much less provide a resolution that leaves a newspaper reader feeling replete. Real life is messy – often drawn-out, boring and inconclusive. Some mysteries outside the world of paperbacks are destined to remain unsolved.

Because fictional devices are so fiendishly effective – a well-constructed story induces a benign equivalent of drug addiction – journalists are understandably tempted to frame real events in fictional terms. But given that reality is obstreperous, getting news stories to tell like thrillers can lead to distortion and injustice.

In the case of Madeleine McCann, the British media has frequently elevated the requirements of fiction over the truth. As a consequence, a grieving couple’s loss of their daughter has been made even more agonising than it had to be. Indeed, this last year’s over-the-top Maddy-mongering has to go down as one of British journalism’s most shameful instances of cheap, cavalier opportunism – of its greater commitment to a “good story” over the accurate one.

Blonde-headed moppet disappears from rented apartment while the family is on holiday in Portugal. Great first chapter. Natural appeal to wide British audience, especially fellow parents: this could be you! Happily, pics of Madeleine are fetching; the little girl is a heartbreaker. Having no idea what kind of wild, unruly animal they were leashing to their cause, the parents capitalise on the fact that their daughter’s disappearance has captured their compatriots’ imagination. Enlisting the media, they turn the mystery into a “cause celeb”. They give interviews, make video appeals, raise £1 million. All in the interests of finding their daughter.

But not only is the media a wild animal; the story itself is a monster. It demands to be fed. A meaningless misfortune is unacceptable. We need a theme. We need a moral. So the press grows chiding. The parents were obviously negligent. They should never have left their children unsupervised while they wined and dined 50 metres away. It’s a pretty weak theme for a heavyweight story – we have trouble seeing losing a daughter as a fair punishment for merely marginal child-minding practices – but it will do for now.

Meanwhile, Maddy cannot remain a dreary missing persons case. The girl was clearly abducted, so we need a villain. The suspicion the press directed towards the incriminatingly helpful neighbour Robert Murat and then towards fellow diner Russell O’Brian served sequential narrative purposes. First, we’d have our man. Next, these disposable characters could be tidily converted to red herrings.

If I were writing this book, I couldn’t come up with a more sensational (if predictable) plot twist than to reveal: it was the parents all along! Suddenly we discover infinitesimal traces of “bodily fluids” in their rental car. But of course! Madeleine’s blood! Haven’t the parents been ostentatiously co?operative with the investigation as a cover for their own culpability? Didn’t Kate McCann come across as creepily stoic and composed? Why, she didn’t play her part right! She didn’t weep inconsolably on camera! That was the clue planted early in the story that she’s really a calculating murderess, her spotlight-hogging husband her accomplice. And by the by, what’s happened to all that (trustee-controlled) money raised to find the girl?

Big fizzle. The forensic evidence for the couple’s guilt turns out to be worthless. To this day, Madeleine has never turned up, not as a body, not as a sex slave in Morocco. Neither the scheming parents nor a tall dark stranger have been brought to book. Crap novel. No Richard and Judy for you.

Once more, reality fails to give good plot. But can you blame the media for trying to craft a bestselling thriller out of such promising material?

Yes, you can blame them. The McCanns aren’t characters. I subject my own characters to all manner of indignities, but I try to be decent to my friends. The British press failed to treat Kate and Gerry like real people. They were castigated, scrutinised, vilified, tried and de facto convicted for murder as if they were made-up characters in the kind of time-killer book that you leave behind on the seat when your plane lands.

In a speech for the Edinburgh TV festival last summer, just to be catchy, I coined the neologism “hyper-narrative” to describe the faddish, repetitive, and obsessive mining of single news stories for filler content to which the British media are prone. A hyper-narrative is not meant to be a synonym for “big story” – a large event of obvious significance that gets the attention it deserves, like the Asian tsunami or 7/7. Rather, a hyper-narrative is a good story that isn’t necessarily a big story. It’s a story of nominal social importance that is played up disproportionately in the media because it satisfies what are essentially fictional appetites. It either naturally conforms to, or can be forced to conform to, the structure of popular novels.

Mind, this dependence on mountains from molehills to feed the insatiable appetite for copy in papers and glossies is not a British invention. In its dependency on often salacious, prurient news stories that keep the public amused for months on end, the American media is even worse.

The following plots have the ring of popular fiction. A former black football star and film actor is accused of murdering his white wife and her friend. (Sounds like the blurb on a book jacket, doesn’t it?) A renowned pop music star is accused of preying sexually on little boys who come to stay at his charity ranch. (I immediately conjure a six- to seven-figure advance.)

So what’s wrong with using the news as entertainment? Isn’t it understandable that dishing out life in Dickensian instalments sells more papers?

When journalists are slaves to a “good story”, they are easily enticed into monkeying with the truth to get it to function like fiction. By far the most classic hyper-narrative in Britain is the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, which, if we eliminate the insinuation, exaggeration, sentimentality and paranoia, doesn’t really tell very well: “Popular princess dies in car accident. The end.”

In Waterstone’s, I wouldn’t pay 10p for that. Thus for years the media has played up every conspiracy theory going in their determination to insert a proper villain and give the story some heft. They have strained to draw thematic conclusions (about the paparazzi or the callous scheming of the Royal Family) from what is really a plain sad story that doesn’t, alas, mean very much or lend itself to “lessons” of any kind.

“Little girl disappears. The end” is also a sad story in real life. But as fiction, it’s rubbish. Thus when running large on such a current event, the temptation is to give outlandish theories credence, to subject walk-ons to cameo suspicion and eventually to demonise the very people who have paid most dearly for our mere diversion. (I personally do not buy that most journalists covering this story have been genuinely anguished.

Madeleine McCann has presented their employers with a commercial opportunity, reporters and commentators a crop of topics that has flowered for a full year. The harvesting of her disappearance for column inches constitutes my version of child abuse.)

You know how you’re on holiday and, against your better judgment, you buy something large and unwieldy as a souvenir, like a piñata in Mexico? You get it back to your hotel and, alas, your case is a hard-shell Samsonite. Try as you might, the souvenir doesn’t fit in the bag. Bits stick out; the zip jams; you cannot close the lid. The only way you’re getting that souvenir back is by crushing it or breaking off the pieces that stick out. You can get it in the bag all right, but it won’t be whole.

Fiction is a hard-shell Samsonite. Its parameters are rigid. Reality is more like that piñata – misshapen and asymmetric. Real people do not behave neatly like characters; if circumstances cast them in heroic roles, they may still have annoying habits that make them frustratingly “unattractive”. They may not co?operate with your hard-shell expectations that they burst into tears on cue. You cannot cram news stories into the strict form of fiction without smashing them, bending them or leaving behind the bits that don’t fit.

Journalists have to remain committed to keeping reality intact, even if the real story is flat. Because that is their job. My job is to make stuff up. My job is to concoct stories that work in their own narrative terms, and I try to craft proper page-turners. Like many literary novelists, I may blur the distinction between hero and villain, but I still furnish conflict, a climax and thematic resolution. So leave the novels to me. That’s what capitalism calls division of labour.

Meanwhile, though nothing will ever compensate for the loss of their daughter, for a whole year’s worth of gratuitous suffering, public humiliation, persecution, baseless accusations, and unwarranted intrusions into their private lives, the British media owe Kate and Gerry McCann a big fat apology – and a bouquet the size of Kew Gardens.

• Lionel Shriver is the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin and The Post-Birthday World, just out in paperback with HarperCollins (£7.99).