Bridget O'Donnell, Partner of Jeremy Wilkins explains how they NEVER left their children alone but the group of British doctors did…

(extract from the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2227416,00.html)
Thanks very much for referring me to this Anon. It provides a very helpful first hand account, eve though the proeeds from her article are to be donated to the Find Madeleine Fund. I have numbered the paras of her article so that I can refer to them
Re para 1. It strikes me as very odd is that she says "Jez" (Jeremy Wilkins) bumped into Gerry at 8.30 whilst on a trip to check his children. This contradicts Gerry's own account given on Panorama that he and Kate both left for the Tapas at 8.30. Somehow it does not surprise me to hear that Gerry was the loud boastful joker. Kate the one to sit and quietly listen to him. This fits with my impression of Kate being the more intelligent and thoughtful one of the two. How many times have we heard that cliché about clever women allowing the man to sound off and think they are in control, but in reality the woman is.
Re para 2. She sets the scene for excusing the McCanns "they were exposed"!
Re para 3. In spite of the chief McPologist on the Daily Express (Rosiepops) yet again today seeking to insist there was a "listening service" we have it confirmed here that is of course a LIE, which has been established many times on the DE forum, but still she persists in this lie, for obvious excusatory reasons of her own. There was the expensive, in demand baby sitting service or putting the children in the crèche, a 10 minute walk, the option this couple chose until it just became to problematic to leave their little boy at all and so they started staying in. The choice of normal reasonable parents who know that having children means making sacrifices for them to keep them safe and happy. At the start of this article which I have not reproduced we are told this was a bargain basement holiday. She and her husband are TV producers. The McCann gang doctors. £200 would be a bargain basement holiday to me, not the £1500 cost of this one. Madeleine had her own peg in the tots club. This holiday seemed to be all about parents being allowed to relieve themselves of their children and that obviously comes at a price. I find it odd that they all baulk at the thought of paying for "expensive babysitters". I have never been accustomed to this sort of money but always did pay when my husband and I wanted to go out, unless my mum would oblige! What selfish arrogant people!

Para 4 confirms the doctors always ate at the Tapas and always left their children - every single night! Gerry told her they were leaving thei children - what an odd thing to brag about - why did he do that???? This seems like another weird example of Gerry McCann "staging" the planned "abduction" by clearly letting people know that it was possible…. She thought, quite normally, "they are too far away and I would worry about them waking up".

Re para 5 This is a startling piece of information HER PARTNER JEZ CARRIED THEIR LITTLE BLOND CHILD IN A BLANKET ON THURS 3 MAY!! Are we being set up for an explanation of Jane Tanner's supposed sighting of Madeleine being carried off…..in spite of the fact there would seem to be clear evidence she never left the table anyway. It is curious that throughout her lengthy account, clearly doing her best to support the McCanns - she gives no details of any checks being made by anyone - other than Gerry leaving the apartment at 8.30 - where was Kate????

Re para 6 There were tennis lessons for the children that day "Madeleine must have been there but I could not distinguish her". This is very worrying and clearly implies that Maddie was not there "earlier that day". It clearly implies also that Maddie may well have disappeared much earlier in the day than we had originally thought and calls into question the validity of the 2.29 last photo…

Re para 7 Shortly after the tennis lesson for children where she cannot say Maddie was present Gerry is making an exhibition of himself displaying his tennis stroke to Kate where are their children? No mention…

Re para 8 - Gerry bumps into Jez at 8.30 and makes a point of raising the babysitting dilemmas - supposedly checking on his children but he says he had not left them by this stage! Gerry blames being in a group for leaving the children….She says Jez was out with their baby in between 8.30 and 9.30 but does not mention Jez seeing Gerry for a chat around 9.15 to 9.25, contrary to what Gerry tells us! Jez is of course the witness who will say that Jane Tanner was never in the vicinity…

Re para 9 at 1 am Jez asks if he can help in the search for Maddie but is told "there is nothing you can do". How sinister is this? There is only one credible reason for indicating that searching would be pointless!

Re para 10 - why does she point out there is always a vehicle and refer to children being "stuffed in a boot". Ostensibly she is writing this to support Kate and Gerry but in many respects it certainly does not do so!

In the final paras she tells us of proper police searches and sealing off - all contrary to the spin we have been fed. She tells us of people weeping but not Kate and Gerry McCann!

Definitely some food for thought here!

Viv
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1. Some of the parents were in a larger group. Most of them worked for the NHS and had met many years before in Leicestershire. Now they lived in different parts of the UK, and this holiday was their opportunity to catch up, to introduce their children, to reunite. They booked a large table every night in the Tapas. We called them "the Doctors". Sometimes we would sit out on our balcony and their laughter would float up around us. One man was the joker. He had a loud Glaswegian accent. He was Gerry McCann. He played tennis with Jes.
2. One morning, I saw Gerry and his wife Kate on their balcony, chatting to their friends on the path below. Privately I was glad we didn't get their apartment. It was on a corner by the road and people could see in. They were exposed.
3. In the evenings, babysitting at the resort was a dilemma. "Sit-in" babysitters were available but were expensive and in demand, and Mark Warner blurb advised us to book well in advance. The other option was the babysitting service at the kiddie club, which was a 10-minute walk from the apartment. The children would watch a cartoon together and then be put to bed. You would then wake them, carry them back and put them to bed again in the apartment. After taking our children to dinner a couple of times, we decided on the Wednesday night to try the service at the club.
4. We had booked a table for two at Tapas and were placed next to the Doctors' regular table. One by one, they started to arrive. The men came first. Gerry McCann started chatting across to Jes about tennis. Gerry was outgoing, a wisecracker, but considerate and kind, and he invited us to join them. We discussed the children. He told us they were leaving theirs sleeping in the apartments. While they chatted on, I ruminated on the pros and cons of this. I admired them, in a way, for not being paranoid parents, but I decided that our apartment was too far off even to contemplate it. Our baby was too young and I would worry about them waking up.
5. My phone rang as our food arrived; our baby had woken up. I walked the round trip to collect him from the kiddie club, then back to the restaurant. He kept crying and eventually we left our meal unfinished and walked back again to the club to fetch our sleeping daughter. Jes carried her home in a blanket. The next night we stayed in. It was Thursday, May 3.
6. Earlier that day there had been tennis lessons for the children, with some of the parents watching proudly as their girls ran across the court chasing tennis balls. They took photos. Madeleine must have been there, but I couldn't distinguish her from the others. They all looked the same - all blonde, all pink and pretty.
7. Jes and Gerry were playing on the next court. Afterwards, we sat by the pool and Gerry and Kate talked enthusiastically to the tennis coach about the following day's tournament. We watched them idly - they had a lot of time for people, they listened. Then Gerry stood up and began showing Kate his new tennis stroke. She looked at him and smiled. "You wouldn't be interested if I talked about my tennis like that," Jes said to me. We watched them some more. Kate was calm, still, quietly beautiful; Gerry was confident, proud, silly, strong. She watched his boyish demonstration with great seriousness and patience. That was the last time I saw them that day. Jes saw Gerry that night.
8. Our baby would not sleep and at about 8.30pm, Jes took him out for a walk in the buggy to settle him. Gerry was on his way back from checking on his children and the two men stopped to have a chat. They talked about daughters, fathers, families. Gerry was relaxed and friendly. They discussed the babysitting dilemmas at the resort and Gerry said that he and Kate would have stayed in too, if they had not been on holiday in a group. Jes returned to our apartment just before 9.30pm. We ate, drank wine, watched a DVD and then went to bed. On the ground floor, a completely catastrophic event was taking place. On the fourth floor of the next block, we were completely oblivious.
9. At 1am there was a frantic banging on our door. Jes got up to answer. I stayed listening in the dark. I knew it was bad; it could only be bad. I heard male mumbling, then Jes's voice. "You're joking?" he said. It wasn't the words, it was the tone that made me flinch. He came back in to the room. "Gerry's daughter's been abducted," he said. "She ..." I jumped up and went to check our children. They were there. We sat down. We got up again. Weirdly, I did the washing-up. We wondered what to do. Jes had asked if they needed help searching and was told there was nothing he could do; she had been missing for three hours. Jes felt he should go anyway, but I wanted him to stay with us. I was a coward, afraid to be alone with the children - and afraid to be alone with my thoughts.
10. I once worked as a producer in the BBC crime unit. I directed many reconstructions and spent my second pregnancy producing new investigations for Crimewatch. Detectives would call me daily, detailing their cases, and some stories stay with me still, such as the ones about a girl being snatched from her bath, or her bike, or her garden and then held in the passenger seat, or stuffed in the boot. There was always a vehicle, and the first few hours were crucial to the outcome. Afterwards, they would be dumped naked in an alley, or at a petrol station with a £10 note to "get a cab back to Mummy". They would be found within an hour or two. Sometimes.
11. From the balcony we could see some figures scratching at the immense darkness with tiny torch lights. Police cars arrived and we thought that they would take control. We lay on the bed but we could not sleep.
12. The next morning, we made our way to breakfast and met one of the Doctors, the one who had come round in the night. His young daughter looked up at us from her pushchair. There was no news. They had called Sky television - they didn't know what else to do. He turned away and I could see he was going to weep.
13. People were crying in the restaurant. Mark Warner had handed out letters informing them what had happened in the night, and we all wondered what to do. Mid-sentence, we would drift in to the middle distance. Tears would brim up and recede.
14. Our daughter asked us about the kiddie club that day. She had been looking forward to their dance show that afternoon. Jes and I looked at each other. My first instinct was that we should not be parted from our children. Of course we shouldn't; we should strap them to us and not let them out of our sight, ever again. But then we thought: how are we going to explain this to our daughter? Or how, if we spent the day in the village, would we avoid repeatedly discussing what had happened in front of her as we met people on the streets? What does a good parent do? Keep the children close or take a deep breath and let them go a little, pretend this was the same as any other day?
15. We walked towards the kiddie club. No one else was there. We felt awful, such terrible parents for even considering the idea. Then we saw, waiting inside, some of the Mark Warner nannies. They had been up most of the night but had still turned up to work that day. They were intelligent, thoughtful young women and we liked and trusted them. The dance show was cancelled, but they wanted to put on a normal day for the children. Our daughter ran inside and started painting. Then, behind us, another set of parents arrived looking equally washed out. Then another, and another. We decided, in the end, to leave them for two hours. We put their bags on the pegs and saw the one labelled "Madeleine". Heads bent, we walked away, into the guilty glare of the morning sun.
16. Locals and holidaymakers had started circulating photocopied pictures of Madeleine, while others continued searching the beaches and village apartments. People were talking about what had happened or sat silently, staring blankly. We didn't see any police.