I think I may have phrased what I was trying to say, wrongly. What I meant when I said the tennis player had said (I'm paraphrasing) "Oh, Kate was howling... an animalistic sound that I've only heard twice before. Once when my mother died, and once when my nephew died", what I was trying to say was that she seemed to emphasis the word "died".
"Once when my mother died, and once when my nephew died."
It was almost as if she was saying - years later, undoubtedly once she'd devoured all the news reports, and gossiped with others about her part in the whole fiasco of an investigation - that she somehow believed, in that moment she heard Kate McCann howling, that the mother, at least, knew that her child was dead.
I also found it quite interesting that she was pretty much salivating over "funny" and "good tennis player" Gerry McCann. She used other adjectives, too, which seemed to suggest that she only knew him and not his wife/children... yet still felt the need to speculate for the docu-crew. The other tourist, the male whose daughter actually interacted with Madeline McCann in the Kids Club, was more circumspect, more factual, more "she dived in after my child's straw hat and frightened everyone" (implying that she was a fearless child).
Do I think that Kate and/or Gerry McCann had anything to do with the disappearance of their child? Other than ignoring her saying "why didn't you come when [brother] and I were crying last night, Mummy?" and leaving them alone whilst they wandered off across a complex to eat dinner with their friends... actually, no. I think that it was simply a case of "we're on holiday, everyone says this place is really safe, we want some child-free time together". Hindsight, as someone else has already said, is 20/20... and, at the end of the day, they are the ones who will have to live with the terrible, awful consequences of a choice which they made that night. I don't even want to start imagining how I would cope, react, feel if one of my children had been snatched in that way. I really don't. Conversely, do I think Madeline McCann is still alive and going to be found one day? No. And I truly hope that if she was taken by paedophiles, that she was sedated... and never woke up. That's my personal opinion and hope, and I know that it's probably not a popular one. But as a mother, as a child sex abuse survivor... really, after 10 years, I think that's the best we can actually hope for. Do I understand why the McCanns are continuing their search for their daughter? Yes. Absolutely. But what happens when she's still not been found alive in another 10 years time? Or 20...? Will they still be searching for her? Will they expect her siblings to continue searching for her? Will we have another situation akin to the Keith Bennett one, where his mother died not knowing where her son was, and passed the baton onto his younger brother?
I don't condone their choices... but I also cannot condemn them.
I do, however, think that female tennis player was thoroughly enjoying being filmed and questioned about "her" part in this horrific event. And personally, I find that questionable in and of itself.