Madeleine McCann’s grandmother yesterday criticised her daughter’s fateful decision to leave the youngster and her brother and sister alone in their bedroom.

‘Why did they think it was OK to do this?’ asked Susan Healy, 62.

She revealed that her first words to the couple in the frantic phone call informing her of Madeleine’s disappearance were: ‘Where were you?’

And she said she could understand public anger at the couple for going to dinner while their children slept unattended in an unlocked apartment more than 50 yards away.

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Missing a year: Madeleine McCann. Tragic questions: Kate’s mother Susan Healy

She said she wanted to ’shake’ Kate and her husband Gerry for the decision, which has now haunted them for a year and which could still be used by Portuguese police to support a charge of child negligence.

The grandmother revealed that Madeleine still appeared to Mrs McCann in ‘visions’.

The family is marking the first anniversary of Madeleine’s abduction, which takes place on Saturday, with a media offensive.

In a two-hour ITV documentary screened tonight Kate McCann, 40,breaks down as she tells how she has ‘persecuted’ herself for leaving the children alone.

The couple allowed cameras to follow them on a series of trips linked to their Find Madeleine campaign, and to film inside their house where the twins Sean and Amelie, now three, played happily.

They have also struck a year-long deal with the celebrity magazine Hello!, which has agreed to run a story every week in support of their campaign.

Mrs Healy, speaking to her local paper the Liverpool Echo, relived the moment that Mr McCann, 39, called her on May 3 and said he thought Madeleine had been abducted from her bed.

She said her first question was simply: ‘Where were you?’

She said: ‘I can read articles that say Kate and Gerry should never have left their children and I can accept that.

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Tortured tears: Kate McCann in the documentary. Her mother says she sees Madeleine in ‘visions’

‘You find yourself over and over again in your head thinking, “Why did they think it would be all right? Why did they think – all of them – it was OK to do this?”‘

Mrs Healy and her husband Brian, 68, of Allerton, Liverpool, flew out to Praia da Luz the day after the phone call and said they found Mrs McCann ‘absolutely wailing’ with distress.

A year later, the GP wept again during filming for the TV documentary in which she and her consultant cardiologist husband speak about virtually every aspect of their daughter’s disappearance, their emotional ordeal and their attempts to find her.

Why didn’t you come when we were crying, mummy?

Mr McCann said the couple and their friends, the so-called Tapas Nine, considered eating with their children on the night of May 3.

They had devised their own system of putting the youngsters to bed, going to dinner at the tapas bar in the apartment complex and taking turns to check on the rooms.

But on the morning of May 3 Madeleine said she and baby brother Sean had been crying the night before, and asked her mother why she had not come to comfort them.

They talked about returning instead to the restaurant where they ate on the first night of their holiday, the Millennium, with their children, but decided it was too far away.

Mr McCann said: ‘The worst thing is we kind of almost thought about not going.’

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Mailbox: How the McCanns have filed the flood of correspondence

Photographs of the scene have since revealed the McCanns had a direct view from the tapas bar to the unlocked patio doors which led to their two-bedroom flat, but could not see the children’s bedroom window at the rear of the apartment.

Mrs McCann said: ‘We were all going to go up to the Millennium again, that was with the kids, which is what we did the first night.

‘It was just because the walk was so long and we didn’t have a buggy and the kids were tired by that time.’

She added: ‘If there’d even been one second where someone had said “Do you think it’s going to be OK?” it wouldn’t have happened. ‘There’s absolutely no way if I’d had the slightest inkling that there was a risk involved there, that I’d have done it.’

The couple allowed cameras to follow them on a series of trips linked to their Find Madeleine campaign, and to film inside their house where the twins Sean and Amelie, now three, played happily.

Of the decision to leave the children in the apartment, Mrs McCann said: ‘It seemed a fairly natural thing to do, it was so close. You could actually see the apartment and it didn’t feel that different to dining out in the back garden.’

The McCanns initially said they believed an abductor had forced open the blinds on the rear bedroom window of their apartment, which faces the street.

But they have since said they think an intruder could have let himself in through the patio doors, which they kept unlocked in case of an emergency.

We have to live with the fact that we weren’t there

The McCanns said they had tortured themselves for a year about leaving their children alone.

Mr McCann said: ‘People will say that they’ve never done that and you know, who am I to argue? We have to live with the fact that we weren’t directly there and if we were then possibly, probably it wouldn’t have happened.

‘The worst thing is that you can’t change any of that and it doesn’t help find her.’

Mrs McCann’s leaked witness statement revealed Madeleine and Sean were crying in their bedroom on the night of May 2, and that Madeleine asked the next morning: ‘Mummy, why didn’t you come when Sean and me were crying?’

Mrs McCann said she now feared her children might have been disturbed that night by Madeleine’s eventual abductor, and said she wished she had questioned her oldest daughter about what had happened.

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Shrine: The mantelpiece at the family home in Leicestershire

She said: ‘I’ve persecuted myself over and over again about that statement because you think why didn’t I just hold her and say “What do you mean? Do you mean you woke up?”

‘But you don’t think that (at the time). I mean it’s easy saying that after what’s happened.’

The panic, the praying. . .and the total devastation

In the minutes after Madeleine went missing, Mrs McCann and her friends instantly thought that the little girl would be smuggled across the Portuguese border.

‘I can remember our friends shouting, “We need to close the borders” and they were shouting “Morocco, Algiers”,’ recalled Kate.

‘I can remember all this going on – and roadblocks, “we need roadblocks”.’

Mr McCann said he insisted his wife stay at the apartment in the hope that Madeleine would be found.

‘I was mainly in the bedroom and I was just praying actually,’ she said.

Her husband added: ‘I was just ringing people and getting everyone to pray, and just felt so helpless.

It was absolute devastation and total, just total emotion really.’

His wife said: ‘I knew what pyjamas she had on and I just thought she’s going to be freezing.

‘And it was just dark … every minute seemed like an hour and obviously we were up all night and just waited for that first bit of light about six o’clock.’

When they accused us, it was like being in a horror movie

Madeleine’s parents told of their shock and anger at being named as official suspects by the Portuguese police, and their fear that they would be separated from their twins.

Mr McCann said: ‘You’re in the middle of a horror movie really, a nightmare. Pressure such as I’ve never felt before. You’re under attack in one way or another. The speculation takes you to the worst places and the worst place would have been being charged, potentially being put in jail, certainly being detained to face charges that could have taken years to materialise, being separated from Sean and Amelie.’

Mrs McCann said: ‘As soon as I realised the story or theory was that Madeleine was dead and that we’d been involved somehow, it just hit home. They haven’t been looking for Madeleine.’

Social services did visit the McCanns’ home in Rothley, Leicestershire, and said they were satisfied with the couple’s childcare arrangements.

Suddenly I became invincible, like a lioness for her cubs

Police told Mrs McCann she would serve a lighter jail sentence if she confessed to her involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.

She told of her furious reaction, saying: ‘I’d have fought to the death at that point. There was no way I was going to be railroaded into something.

‘I felt almost invincible at that point. I just don’t know what kicked in. I just thought my children deserve that, Madeleine deserves that. Someone has to be fighting for Madeleine.’

She said she felt like a ‘lioness and her cubs’ in her determination that she would not be separated from the twins.

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Kate speaks about the family’s emotional ordeal on a special ITV documentary

But she revealed how she dreaded the prospect of having to search for Madeleine for another 40 years.

She said: ‘We’re never going to get to a day where you think, “OK, we’ve tried everything now. We’re exhausted and we need to start living”.’

Mr McCann said: ‘Your life is carrying on to an extent, in a quasi-real existence, a purgatory-type existence.’

Mrs McCann lashed out at the Portuguese police’s smear campaign against the family.

She said she was furious that detectives had apparently leaked their witness statements on the day the couple made a high-profile campaign visit to the European Parliament.

The statements – including the revelation that Madeleine had been crying the night before – overshadowed the visit.

Mrs McCann said: ‘The whole thing is to detract from what we’re doing and I feel absolutely gutted. I think it’s an absolute disgrace.’

Support, offers of help . . . and poisonous hate mail

Conspiracy theorists, psychics and supporters have inundated the McCanns with letters since Madeleine vanished.

The couple said the vast majority were supportive but that they have had to refer some hate mail to the police, including one death threat.

In the documentary they are shown opening letters and filing them into boxes, including files marked Nasty, Nutty, Psychic Visions and Dreams, Ideas and Well-wishers.

Mr McCann read one spiteful Christmas card to the camera, saying: ‘Your brat is dead because of your drunken arrogance. Shame on you. I curse you and your family to suffer forever. Cursed Christmas.’

Is she tall? Is her hair long? And can she write her name?

Kate McCann broke down several times as she spoke about her missing daughter, saying: ‘She’s like a little buddy to me.’

She said: ‘It doesn’t feel like a year since I saw Madeleine. She’s just so much, very much still there and she doesn’t seem that far away.

‘I see Madeleine’s best friend from time to time. Can’t help but wonder what would Madeleine be like, would she be that much taller, you know, is her hair as long as that? You know, and would she be writing her name too?

‘You know she’s there waiting for us. She deserves us to keep going.’

Madeleine’s grandmother Mrs Healy said Mrs McCann is so traumatised by her daughter’s disappearance that she sees the little girl in ‘visions’.

She told Closer magazine: ‘When Kate told me she was unable to sleep on a few occasions, I asked her if her twins had woken her as they sometimes get into her bed. But she told me: “Madeleine came”.

‘She imagines Madeleine is there with her. My heart goes out to her. There are times when she’s absolutely devastated and bereft.’

The McCanns are spearheading a campaign for a Europe-wide alert system for missing children. Mr McCann said: ‘We feel a moral obligation that some sort of good has to come of this.’

The couple revealed they believe Madeleine is still alive because of what they’ve learned from world experts on missing children during their campaigning.

Mrs McCann said: ‘I don’t feel as if Madeleine is dead. I really feel she is out there and we will find her. The chances of her being alive are as good now, if not better, than they were after the first three days of her going missing.’

Sitting beside a swimming pool in the Algarve on that May evening Gerry and Kate McCann were enjoying themselves. The tapas bar of the Mark Warner holiday resort in Praia da Luz was buzzing with holidaymakers and it was quiz night.

The McCanns were favourites to win the contest organised by the resort’s aerobics teacher Najova Chekaya. After all, the two doctors had brains on their side. Around their table were seven friends from England, three of them also doctors and one a top medical research fellow.

The group of nine were holidaying in Portugal and wanted to have a good time. As one of the doctors, Matthew Oldfield, was to recall: “We drank. So what! We were on holiday.”

But 50 yards away on the other side of the swimming pool, the group’s children were sleeping alone. In the bedroom of one ground floor apartment was Madeleine, the McCanns’ three-year-old daughter.

Her twin brother and sister, Sean and Amelie, two, lay in cots either side of her. They had been tucked up at 7pm. Half an hour later the McCanns had joined their friends for dinner at the tapas bar.

What happened next has mystified the world.

At 10pm Kate McCann got up from the table to check on her children. She slipped in through the patio windows to find the twins safely asleep – and her daughter’s bed empty.

In tears and calling out Madeleine’s name, she ran back to her friends to tell them: “They’ve taken her, they’ve taken her.”

Madeleine has not been seen in the 100 days since May 3. Last night Portuguese police said they were concentrating on what they call the “missing hour” before Mrs McCann found her daughter gone. They say it is possible that she was kidnapped after her father last checked her at 9.05pm and her mother’s terrible discovery.

Meanwhile the campaign to keep the public aware of Madeleine’s name goes on. It has involved her Roman Catholic parents visiting the Pope.

And, on the instructions of JK Rowling, posters of Madeleine were distributed at British bookshops as they opened for the sale of the new Harry Potter book.

This week the donations from the public to a Madeleine fund, financing the PR campaign and global search for the little girl from Rothley in Leicestershire, was nudging £1 million.

More than 50 million people visited the Find Madeleine website in the 48 hours after its launch.

Nothing like this has ever been seen before, and probably never will again.

The campaign has been organised by the McCanns, both 38. Today they believe their daughter is still alive and was abducted by a stranger. Whether the motive was paedophilia, the sale of Madeleine for adoption or even the trade of her organs, they have no idea. Nor do they speculate.

As Mr McCann wrote on his website the other day: “The Portuguese police have assured us on numerous occasions that they are looking for Madeleine and not a corpse.”

Yet this week attitudes towards the McCanns underwent a seismic shift, the questions growing more aggressive by the day. The scenario of a small girl being kidnapped without warning on a spring holiday in a family friendly resort is now the subject of lurid debate – particularly in Portugal.

Disturbing questions are being asked about the behaviour of the McCanns and their friends.

The catalyst was the discovery this week, by British police with sniffer dogs, of specks of blood on a wall in the family’s apartment.

The blood is now being analysed in this country, raising unpalatable speculation that Madeleine was killed where she slept and was then carried off to the beach or bundled into a car boot.

The reluctance of Gerry and Kate McCann or their friends to speak publicly, or in any detail, about the minutiae of the evening has fuelled the controversy, although they insist it is illegal in Portugal to comment on any police investigation.

In another uncomfortable development the Portuguese press, including the respected newspaper Dairio de Noticias, has claimed that interviews given by the McCann group to police contain discrepancies. Their stories and the timings of their movements on the night do not tally.

Furthermore, emails and phone messages sent between the group – and intercepted by the PolÌcia Judiciaria and British detectives helping the inquiry – are reported to contain conversations that contradict earlier statements.

But the spotlight is equally falling on the seemingly woeful response of the Policia Judiciaria. They only arrived two hours after the alarm was raised. A British expert on child abduction who visited the resort a few days later said it the worst preserved crime scene he had ever witnessed.

Twenty people – including resort workers and other holidaymakers – are believed to have entered the McCanns’ apartment after the disappearance. The patio windows at the rear, and the closest point to the tapas bar, were touched by searchers.

The patio had been left open by the McCanns in case of fire and, it appears, so that they could easily check the children.

But what of Madeleine’s bedroom? It was situated next to the apartment’s front door which is around the corner and a further 30 yards on, next to a road into the resort and a busy carpark.

Notably the bedroom, completely out of the sight of the tapas bar, had heavy, metal window shutters. These were also contaminated in the search.

Even her bedtime toy Cuddle Cat – which is now carried by Mrs McCann – was not isolated for forensic analysis.

Local newspapers and television have criticised the McCann group, who left their children alone for two and a half hours as they wined and dined.

One question being asked is why didn’t the parents put their children in the evening creche which is open until 11.30pm? Why didn’t they hire a babysitter, bookable at the Mark Warner reception desk?

In a further twist, locals now claim that Madeleine did not always settle well. One evening they allege she ran away into the paths between the apartments, hiding for half an hour when it was time for bed.

Whatever the truth, to begin to unravel the mystery one has to go back to the seemingly carefree days at the start of the holiday.

Gerry and Kate McCann and their friends are like-minded people, with children of similar ages. And they knew each other in the Midlands. Mr McCann is a consultant cardiologist at a Leicester’s Glenfield Hospital and his wife is a GP.

Until recently Dr Oldfield worked at Leicester general hospital. David Payne is a senior research fellow in cardiovascular sciences at Leicester University and his wife, Fiona, is a doctor. Another of the holidaymakers, Dr Russell O’Brien, also worked at Leicester University before moving this summer.

Recently they all went to Mark Warner’s in Greece where they had devised a plan of leaving their children to sleep while they had dinner nearby.

As Mr McCann explained: “The distance is so small, it was so close it was almost like having dinner in your garden. What we were doing was rigorous with multiple people checking at regular intervals.”

When asked if Madeleine might have wandered out through the unlocked patio windows towards the swimming pool, or beyond to the beach, the McCanns dismiss it out of hand.

“We’re absolutely certain. We double and treble-checked and have no doubt she was taken,” said Mr McCann. Yet another scenario is now emerging in the local press. It is built on the recollections of other guests and workers at the resort.

The official story from the McCanns is this. Mr McCann said he checked on his three children at 9.05pm. He noticed that a door in the apartment which had been left shut was ajar.

He thought nothing of it but it may have indicated that a kidnapper was already there. But his daughter was fast asleep so he went back to the tapas bar.

Another of the group, Jane Tanner, says she took her turn 10 minutes later. She claimed later to police that she saw a dark-haired man of about 35 carrying a child as she walked back to the bar afterwards but thought nothing of it.

Soon after her return – at 9.45pm – Dr Oldfield did his round of the bedrooms. In a first statement to police, it is unclear if he actually went inside the McCann flat.

Indeed, one scenario is that many of the checks of the children were not visible, but involved listening at doors or even from outside the apartments.

However, in a second statement Dr Oldfield insists he did look in Madeleine’s bedroom, believes he saw her there, and that there was light coming in through the windows as though the heavy shutters had been opened.

Again, he thought little of it until afterwards. Then, of course, it was Mrs McCann’s turn. She found Madeleine gone.

Madeleine’s aunt Trish Cameron recalled that she received a call later that night from her younger brother, Mr McCann, who told her: “I went back to check the children at nine o’clock. They were all sound asleep, windows shut, shutters shut.”

Mrs Cameron related that when Mrs McCann went to the two apartment a little under an hour later: “The shutters had been jemmied open. They think someone must have come in the window and gone out of the front door with Madeleine.”

But what is now perturbing Portuguese police is how could she be abducted when the McCann group were checking so often? Or have reports inadvertently exaggerated how vigilant the parents really were?

A worker at the tapas bar says that only a tall man, believed to be Russell O’Brien, got up from the table during the entire evening. Of course, this witness might be wrong. A busy barman could not have eyes on the McCann party for two and a half hours.

And what of Najova Chekaya, the aerobics teacher running the quiz? She was invited over to the McCann table by Mr McCann himself when the game ended at 9.30. She stayed for half an hour. She later claimed to friends that nobody left the table.

There is another conundrum too. It concerns the sighting by Jane Tanner of the man carrying a child. He was wearing beige trousers and smart black shoes. Her report is taken seriously by police.

Yet a British holidaymaker, Jeremy Wilkins, has given a deposition that does not support her evidence. He knew Mr McCann because he played tennis with him, and was walking his eight-month-old son in the night air when the drama unfolded.

He says that he met Mr McCann, who had come out of his apartment at 9.05pm, and had a word with him. Soon after that Jane Tanner would have crossed paths with Mr Wilkins and his baby.

Mr Wilkins says he saw no man carrying a child or Jane Tanner herself. “It was a very narrow path and I think it would have been almost impossible for anyone to walk by without me noticing,” he said.

So today the questions remain. Was Madeleine kidnapped or killed? Or unwatched, did she simply walk out and get lost? How could there be a break in with a jemmy through metal shutters without waking the twins or alerting a passerby?

Someone, somewhere must know the answers.