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Family holidays were never the same again after Maddie – we kept our children that little bit closer

The aftermath of Madeleine McCann's disappearance coincided with the beginning of my career as a newspaper travel editor.

I can still remember the indrawn breath whenever we discussed the possibility of publishing a piece on Portugal –anywhere in Portugal, not just the unhappy slice that contained Praia da Luz. But the story felt just as important to me personally.

My first son was born less than a year before Madeleine – he turns 18 next week. I remember furious debate among my friends – most of whom had children of a similar age. Would we have left our five-year-olds alone in a room to go out to dinner, in what clearly seemed a secure, safe resort village, as the McCanns had?

Would we ever do so now that we had witnessed their shattered lives played out in such awful detail in the press? Imagine being asked the question by a reporter if such a tragedy happened to you: Didn't you learn from what happened to Maddie?

Package holidays were under the spotlight, of course. We’d all been on them, all embraced the sense of warm security that they engendered, all let our children snooze through the afternoon sun in the family room while we lounged by the pool, checking on them occasionally. Holidays were carefree, happy things, a chance for families to relish time together. Now, it seemed, a stranger had broken into this idyll, and trampled on all our holiday dreams.

This wasn’t really about package holidays, of course. It was about families dealing with their worst nightmare in a foreign environment. It was impossible then, as it is now, to fully imagine the horror of what the McCanns have been put through, but the truth is family holidays abroad changed after the events of May 3, 2007. Because it wasn't just the dreadful abduction, it was the bewilderment in the parents’ eyes as the world watched them being forced to navigate not just their own personal tragedy but also an alien justice system.

Perhaps we already knew how dreadful it felt to lose sight of a child, just for a few minutes, in a crowded local supermarket, when all the usual signposts of normality, of home, of security, were close by. How much, much worse it would be to experience a parent’s worst nightmare in a country where you might not know the language, wouldn't know the bureaucracy, the protocol, the right numbers to call. All you’d have was a suitcase full of all the things you'd thought you’d need for a child to be happy for a week in the sun: T-shirts, a sunhat, a ball for the beach.

The story ran for such a long time, and every now and again a fresh peak of trauma would emerge for the family, with new Portuguese words for us all to learn as the parents were given arguido (suspect) status, and trails that led to dead ends, all played out under the burning white sunshine of the Algarve. The worst sort of advert for a destination famed for family-friendly package holidays.

I quickly learnt that supposedly inspirational travel stories in my section about a destination that might also be on the front page of the paper the very same day were never going to be appropriate. As is the way with the world of travel – or was the way before the all-consuming coronavirus pandemic hit – we shifted our focus, moved on to other countries, the dreadful thrum of the missing girl being played out elsewhere.

But as a parent, it suddenly wasn’t just the cuts and scrapes of a family adventure I would have in mind on a holiday, it was no longer simply a case of inflating my children’s armbands and applying sunscreen. We all gathered our children that little bit closer; and became a little less carefree as a result.