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Of all the emotions Kate and Gerry McCann have felt over the past year, among the worst must be not knowing what happened to their daughter.

Racked with guilt over leaving their children alone while they dined with friends, plagued by questions of "what if" and even receiving hate mail, one year on the couple still don't know where their daughter Madeleine is.

Madeleine disappeared from the McCann's holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia de Luz on May 3, 2007, just days before her fourth birthday.

With the anniversary looming, her parents have launched a new media offensive, just as they did on a global scale in the days after Madeleine vanished.

As part of their latest publicity campaign aimed at maintaining the child's profile, 40-year-old Kate revealed this week she had clung to other milestones during the search for her little girl.

At 17 days she tried to comfort herself with thoughts of a missing boy who had been found after that time.

An abducted Belgian girl Sabine Dardenne was found after 80 days.

About 277 days into the search, Kate desperately hoped Madeleine could come home just like Elizabeth Smart did nine months after her kidnapping in the US.

At that thought, during a documentary which aired last night, Kate broke down in tears - something she had been criticised for not doing enough in the early days of Madeleine's disappearance.

"You're never going to get to a day where we think, 'OK, we've tried everything now and we're exhausted and we need to start living,' " she told ITV after regaining her composure.

"I just think we need to know because 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."

With echoes of baby Azaria Chamberlain's disappearance in Australia in 1980, Madeleine's story has captured attention around the world and with more twists and turns than the McCanns would ever have expected.

Both articulate doctors, they immediately set about publicising Madeleine's image and making appeals for her safe return, hoping someone would recognised her, or her captor(s) would give her up.

That meant making regular appearances before the world's media, which also exposed them to criticism.

According to some, they were too cold and didn't show enough emotion.

People started asking whether they had something to hide.

Kate says psychological profilers told the pair not to show too much emotion in case Madeleine's kidnapper "got a kick out of it".

Witnesses say they saw a man leaving the apartment with a child matching Madeleine's description, but it was months before an artist's impression of the alleged abductor's face was released.

By that time, the McCanns had been declared official suspects by Portuguese police, whom the couple felt were not doing enough to find their daughter.

But damaging leaks, which they claim were from the Portuguese authorities, kept emerging and the frustrated couple returned to England with two year-old twins Sean and Amelie in a bid to give Madeleine's siblings some semblance of a normal life.

The McCanns received huge public support in Portugal and Britain.

But once home in Rothley, Leicestershire, they also continued to face detractors.

They now file many letters they receive in boxes marked Nutty, Psychics, Visions, Dreams and Nasty.

In March this year they won £550,000 ($1.2 million) in libel damages and rare front-page apologies from Express Newspapers in Britain over allegations they were responsible for the death of their daughter.

A few weeks later the McCanns travelled to Brussels armed with a declaration penned by prominent Australian-born human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, QC, urging the European Union to implement a cross-border alert system for abducted children, similar to one in the US.

Another blow came when the transcripts of their police interviews were leaked revealing that on the morning of her disappearance Madeleine had complained about her mother being absent when she and her brother were crying the previous night.

Kate, who believes the children might have been woken by an intruder, said she was gutted by the timing of the leak and claimed the information had been taken out of context.

She also said she had "persecuted" herself repeatedly for not pressing Madeleine to elaborate on what had happened.

"It doesn't feel like a year since I saw Madeleine," Kate added.

"She's just very much still there and she doesn't seem that far away.

"It feels like she's still with me in some way and I've never felt that I won't see her again."

Gerry agreed: "I do think that she's still out there, very much so.

"A little girl who wasn't even four, who's now nearly five, she's the victim and people should not forget that."

Neither Kate nor Gerry have been charged with any offence and both deny any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance.

AAP

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/where-is-maddie/2008/05/01/1209235021518.html