Missing - Hardcover

Rouse, Rose

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844544974 ISBN 13: 9781844544974

Publisher: John Blake Publishing Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

It is every person's - particularly every parent's - worst nightmare. For a loved one to walk out through the front door and never to return is one of the most heartbreaking, terrifying and harrowing experiences someone can go through. Not to know the fate of a person close to you is simply agonising - did they choose to disappear were they involved in an accident or did something even worse befall them? Not knowing for sure and being uncertain as to whether you should be saying goodbye or waiting for news of their return makes for a life in limbo.Every day in the UK, a staggering 600 people go missing. Most return within 72 hours of disapperaing but there are still a large number that are never seen again. Some are students who take off to distant countries without telling their parents and then disappear; some are husbands who have left the marital home to come to terms with their own problems, there are runaways, unexplained disappearances and missing parents.In this compelling book, journalist Rose Rouse is granted exclusive access to the mothers, brothers, sons, wives, sisters and daughters of those who have vanished without trace. Take 19-year-old Eddie Gibson who went missing in Cambodia in 2004 - his courageous mother just wants her son back; or Tyler Blake, whose mother went missing when he was three - now eight years old, he desperately misses her and wants her back. Rose shares in the turmoil that they have endured in their quest to be reunited with these who have disappeared from their lives.Missing is packed with amazing stories of people who have moved heaven and earth to find their loved ones. The powerful emotions that they have experienced make for truly moving tales of courage and heartbreak that will have you crying and smiling in equal measure.This title includes the recent abduction of Madeleine McCann.

About this title

About the Author

Rose Rouse is a journalist who lives in North West London with her 20-year-old son. For the past 25 years, she's written about everything from jazz eccentric Sun Ra in Harlesden, to rave parties in Goa, and from belly dancing in Turkey to fathers' relationships with their teenage sons, from publications like the Face, the Guardian and the Daily Express.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Missing

By Rose Rouse

John Blake Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 2015 Rose Rouse
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84454-497-4

Contents

Title Page, 
Dedication, 
Epigraph, 
Acknowledgements, 
Introduction, 
Madeleine McCann, 
I Miss My Sweet, Gorgeous Son, 
I Just Want My Husband to Come Home, 
Why Hasn't Anyone Found My Mum?, 
I Loved My Mum and Dad, but I Missed My Birth Parents, 
My Son Did Not Run Away From Home, 
I Didn't Know If My Little Girl Was Dead or Alive, 
I Found My Dad 30 Years Later, 
We've Never Stopped Waiting For You To Walk In, 
My Big Brother Is Out There Somewhere, Living Like a Saint, 
My Dream Came True When I Found My Half-Brothers, 
I Ran Away and Hated It, 
Your Mother and I Think About You Every Day, 
I Was Reunited with My Mother and We're So Alike, 
Epilogue, 
Resources and Helplines, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

Madeleine McCann

It's Madeleine McCann's fourth birthday, 12 May 2007. A white card with the words MUMMY, DADDY, SEAN AND AMELIE WILL SEE YOU SOON is tied to a pink balloon and released into the pale blue sky in Leicestershire, not far from the village of Rothley where the McCann family live. Her great uncle, Brian Kennedy, is responsible for releasing that balloon and the 39 others, which fill the sky with their pinkness and their prayers of hope.

The awful truth is that Madeleine isn't actually with her mummy, daddy and twin siblings to celebrate this birthday because she was abducted nine days earlier.

The McCanns are a modern 30-something, middle-class couple with three children. Gerry McCann is a consultant cardiologist; Kate McCann is a GP. At home, they have a nanny because they both work. At the end of April 2007, they flew to the Algarve in Portugal with a group of friends and their children for a two-week holiday. They were all staying in apartments at the Mark Warner Ocean Club Resort at Praia da Luz. Everything was wonderful – the kids had activity clubs, there was a beach nearby, the adults could mix playing with their children and having some time on their own – until the unimaginable happened.

On Thursday, 3 May, the McCanns were eating dinner with their group of eight friends in the resort's tapas restaurant, which Gerry described as 'like having dinner in your garden'. What he meant was that the restaurant was a stone's throw away from their apartment. As usual, the children – Madeleine and the two-year-old twins – were asleep in one of the bedrooms and the McCanns were checking to see that they were fine every half an hour. Just as they had done most evenings. Just as their friends were all doing. They had decided not to use the resort's babysitting service because they didn't want strangers to be involved with caring for their children. They also left the patio doors open, which allowed easy access to the bedroom where the children were all sleeping. Viewed retrospectively, this may appear to be a strange decision to make, but the McCanns thought they were in a secure haven and they considered it less of a fire hazard to leave the doors open.

At 9.30pm, Gerry checked on their three children and found they were all sleeping peacefully. However, at 10pm, when Kate went to check, Madeleine had disappeared. She was no longer in her bed. Gerry and Kate were immediately plunged into a terrifying new universe; a dark, dark place that they had never in their worst nightmares imagined. Their gorgeous little girl – who would become famous through the photograph released showing her blonde and smiling by the swimming poo

Edition details

• Publisher: John Blake Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1844544974
• ISBN 13: 9781844544974
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288