LISBON, Portugal -- Portuguese police searched Friday for a three-year-old British girl who went missing from an upmarket resort in Southern Portugal where she was on vacation with her family, officials said.

WITH one momentous sentence on May 4, 2007, the Associated Press broke one of the biggest news stories of modern times.

Almost exactly a year on, it continues to fascinate and horrify. To send chills down the spine of every parent. To turn us all into armchair detectives harbouring pet theories on what really happened.

Its complexities, moral and forensic, are still talked about in every home, office and factory, and in every newspaper.

None of us had heard of Madeleine McCann until she was already gone. But we feel we know her now.

To see pictures of the face we will never forget, click on the slideshow below

Since last May, millions of words have been written about her disappearance and the continuing torment of her parents Kate and Gerry. In three Sun specials this week, JOHN PERRY sorts the fact from the fiction in the most complete account to date.

THREE weeks short of the first anniversary of Madeleine McCann’s abduction, her mother Kate spoke publicly for the first time in months. Whatever pain she and her husband Gerry continued to endure, she said, was as nothing compared with that of their daughter, which began on May 3, 2007 and which, for all they know, is ongoing.

“The pain of separation, the confusion, the fear, the absolute fear she has had to endure and is still enduring. She is only four years old,�?said Kate.

Only four years old. But on May 12 she will be five. Madeleine was three when she last saw her mum and dad.

Her kidnapping, carried out without leaving a trace �?at least none Portuguese police have managed to detect �?shocked the world.

Pony ride ... Maddie with Kate

It was not just the abduction, nightmarish though that was. It was that two parents would leave their children alone in an unlocked apartment in a foreign land while they had dinner nearby. The anger directed at the McCanns was amplified because here were two educated, well-paid doctors who should have known better. For some, their middle-classness worsened their guilt.

They were seen as having led a privileged life, having effortlessly produced three perfect children and then having casually, selfishly left them at the mercy of a predator.

For many reasons this could not be further from the truth.

Kate and Gerry McCann are self-made people, not born to privilege. Kate, 40, is a down-to-earth Scouser from a modest home in Liverpool. Gerry, also 40, is the youngest of five children raised in a south Glasgow tenement.

Their brains and talent won them lucrative careers, she as a GP and he as a hospital consultant cardiologist.

Their children were the result of considerable effort and emotional trauma for a couple who could not conceive naturally.

Kate and Gerry met as young doctors working in different departments of Glasgow’s Western Infirmary in the early 1990s.

The attraction was obvious, but any chance of a long-term future together looked doomed from the start when Kate’s wanderlust took her to a job on the other side of the world �?in Wellington, New Zealand. Gerry had also landed a dream post �?in America. But he is a man of steely resolve, as his relentless hunt for Madeleine would later prove. He wasn’t giving up on Kate. At the last minute, his heart ruled his head. He dropped everything and spent his savings flying Down Under to be with her.

It was quite a gamble. Gerry admits: “It was really only then that we started going out together.�?And he joked: “I saw Kate on the other side of the river and I crossed it! She made sure that I followed her. I must have courted her for a long time.�?

Kate reciprocated his devotion with hours spent on the touchlines as he captained amateur Kiwi soccer side Napier City Rovers. He had once been Scottish universities 800 metres champion and was a decent footballer tipped for a professional career before opting for medicine.

His team-mate and close friend Ian Gearey said: “He was such a down-to-earth, natural guy. Kate was a doctor in Wellington and Gerry was a surgeon here in Hawke’s Bay. Everyone said he was very talented and he was well regarded.

“But the work wasn’t the real reason for him coming to New Zealand. He told us he’d come for her, to woo her, really. He won her heart and they got together here.�?

Kate was never in doubt about Gerry after he followed her more than 11,000 miles. By the time they returned to settle in Glasgow in 1998 they were already planning their wedding.

It took place that December, at Our Lady of the Annunciation in Catholic Kate’s home city of Liverpool.

Pain ... Gerry and Kate

Two years on, Gerry got a job as a registrar at Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, and the family moved south.

Kate, desperate for children, gave up on a high-flying career in anaesthetics and gynaecology and started as a part-time GP in Melton Mowbray.

Natural conception proved beyond them. Kate said: “The one thing I had always been definite about is that I wanted a family. I wanted to be a mother. Then, when we were trying for a baby and it wasn’t happening, it was really hard.

“The longer it went on, the harder it was. I saw my friends having children and I was delighted for them, but it made me sad too. We tried unsuccessfully for several years to conceive.

“There came a point when we admitted we needed help. I was so desperate to have a child I’d try anything. I know IVF isn’t everyone’s choice but I wanted to try it.�?

An initial IVF cycle failed, but the couple remained united and strong. Kate finally fell pregnant with Madeleine in 2002. “It was just fantastic. It didn’t seem true,�?she said.

“I did a test at home so I could handle the result if it wasn’t good. I was looking at it thinking, ‘I don’t believe that�? Then I went to the hospital and they checked it. I was really excited.

“It was a really uncomplicated pregnancy �?I had no sickness, nothing.�?

Madeleine was born on May 12, 2003. “There she was, perfect,�?said Kate. “She was lovely. She had the most beautiful face. I’d thought I was going to have a boy, just based on instinct. That actually made it even more special that she was a girl. She took us by surprise.�?

Gerry said: “It was incredibly special because we had been waiting for a long time.

“Others thought we were getting old and might end up not having our own children.

“She was close to the perfect child. I know all parents think that, but Madeleine really was.�?

A friend, Alan Grieves, said: “After many years of hope, the birth of their beautiful Madeleine made their lives complete.

“We have never seen Kate and Gerry as happy as they were that day.�?

Kate said: “The first five or six months were really difficult. Madeleine had very bad colic and cried about 18 hours a day.

“She had to be picked up all the time, so I spent many a day dancing round the living room holding her. Sometimes she looked so sad with colic and the three of us would cuddle together trying to get her through it.

“But you go through that difficult, bad stage and it tightens the bond. We’ve both got an incredible bond with Madeleine.�?

The McCanns and their baby girl moved to Holland for a year while Gerry worked on new heart imaging techniques.

They came back briefly for Madeleine’s baptism, carried out by Father Paul Seddon, who had married the couple five years earlier.

“It was a big family occasion �?a wonderfully happy day,�?said Father Seddon. “Madeleine had a whale of a time and really loved being the centre of attention. She had not long been walking and I have some great memories of trying to keep up with her as she ran around the church.�?

In 2004, still in Holland, Kate fell pregnant again through IVF and the family moved back to England, buying a substantial home in rural Rothley.

Their twins, Sean and Amelie, were born in February 2005 and left little Madeleine awestruck. “She was amazing,�?Kate said. “She was only 20 months old �?still a baby herself �?but she handled it all so well.

“Madeleine came in to see them for the first time and, oh . . . her little face! It was lovely.�?

Madeleine was as bright as a button, outgoing, loving towards her brother and sister and prone to tantrums, as toddlers are.

“She’s got bags of character, that’s for sure,�?Kate said. “She’s very loving, caring, she’s very funny, very chatty, very engaging, but she has her moments, like all children do. I do think she’s pretty special.�?

Gerry added: “She is very funny and often a little ringleader in nursery and with her friends. She was running around shouting, ‘Be a monster, be a monster�?and we would chase her.�?

The couple wanted a big family and were planning to try for a fourth baby. Kate’s dad Brian Healy said: “Children are the most important thing in their lives. Having another was something they’d been thinking about.

“But that was before Madeleine went missing.�?

A grainy family video shot on April 28, 2007, is heartbreaking to watch now. Madeleine, wearing a pink Barbie backpack and holding another little girl’s hand, clambers excitedly up the steps of the plane taking the McCanns on their fateful holiday to Portugal.

Poignant ... the last picture of Maddie

The angel-faced three-year-old slips and grazes her shin on the third step, but cries for only a few seconds. It would take more than that to dampen her enthusiasm about the prospect of a week in the sunshine.

Madeleine, Kate, Gerry and two-year-olds Sean and Amelie were part of a group of 17 flying from East Midlands Airport to the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz. They caught the bmibaby flight at 9.30am.

They landed at Faro and hopped aboard the airport shuttle bus.

The video footage continues. Madeleine, a tiny blonde figure still holding her Barbie bag and wearing pink shorts, a pink top and trainers, swings her legs cheerfully as she sits next to Sean. Kate ruffles Sean’s hair and holds Amelie’s arm.

For some reason Gerry looks sombre. “Cheer up Gerry,�?a friend jokes, to much laughter. “We’re on holiday.�?

Gerry said later: “Madeleine was dead excited about going away with the rest of the kids. It was her first time to Portugal. She had her Barbie rucksack with a pull-up handle. It’s a really girlie one. We all had to have our own rucksacks �?even Sean and Amelie �?it was quite funny.�?

The McCanns�?group arrived at the upmarket Mark Warner Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, on the coast 120 miles south of Lisbon. They intended to stay for a week, returning home on May 5. The four families, nine adults and eight children, had rented apartments in Waterside Gardens Block 5. The McCanns�?flat, 5a, was on the ground floor, on a street corner. The other families had two flats next door, 5b and 5d, and another on the floor above.

That first evening, Saturday, April 28, the group ate dinner at the Millennium Restaurant and Terrace, another Ocean Club property ten minutes away. For the rest of their stay they established a practice of giving the kids tea, playing with them for an hour and then putting them to bed in their apartments before going out to the nearby tapas bar for dinner.

The bar was within sight of the apartments and less than a minute’s walk away.

They took it in turns to make regular checks on the kids. Whatever doubts they should have had about this arrangement were quelled by the sense of security the resort gave them. They could barely imagine a safer place for the children.

But on the morning of May 3, the date the McCanns�?lives changed for ever, Madeleine gave her parents pause for thought.

At breakfast she told them she and the twins had been awake and upset in bed the night before, but no one came to help.

“Mummy,�?she said, “Why didn’t you come when we were crying last night?�?Kate said later: “Gerry and I spoke for a couple of minutes and agreed to keep a closer watch over the children�?�?which meant more frequent returns from the tapas bar to check on them.

“With hindsight Kate and Gerry think someone could have disturbed Madeleine that night,�?their spokesman Clarence Mitchell said later. “But they felt she and the twins were safe and secure.

“They decided to be even more careful in the times they checked on the children.�?

Madeleine spent a happy day at the resort’s children’s club, where she was left with Sean and Amelie while Gerry and Kate had a stroll. “She had a ball,�?Kate said. “They did swimming, went on a little boat, went to a beach, did lots of colouring-in and face painting.�?

The couple collected the children at 12.30pm for lunch at the apartment, then took them back to the kids�?club while they played tennis. Madeleine had tea with staff at 5.30pm and was picked up just before 6pm.

All three kids were put to bed at about 7pm. Madeleine was in her pink Marks and Spencer pyjamas featuring a picture of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.

Kate said: “Before she went to bed, Madeleine said, ‘Mummy, I’ve had the best day ever. I’m having lots of fun�? They had a little dance prepared for Friday. I don’t know what it was. I never got to see it.�?

By 8pm Kate and Gerry were enjoying a bottle of white wine he had bought from the local supermarket. It was a Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc, a favourite from their days in New Zealand.

Complex ... flat was minute's walk from bar

They were six days into their holiday and chatted about how it was all working so well �?they were relaxed and the children were loving it.

Madeleine, Sean and Amelie were asleep in the front bedroom of the apartment, overlooking the small car park and the street beyond. Madeleine had a single bed nearest the door. The twins were next to her in two travel cots.