Where are you Maddie?

Has the little girl turned up yet?"
"No, no she hasn´t!" That´s the way I responded with a rude and forcefull air. "Do you have to ask me the same question everyday?" The same doubts everyday, the same lack of an answer.

Sorry Maddie, but after four or five days and after the second and third week, I also start losing my strength. I don´t know what else to say to my friends son. The little boy who knows i am the only Englishman in town and thinks i should have prior knowledge of Maddie before the Portuguese press. You know maddie, he doesn´t know you, he´s a little older but i can tell he likes you. Everyday when i go for breakfast to my friends café, he asks me again:
"Has the little girl turned up?" But you haven´t. You haven´t turned up, you went away and left everyone worried about you. Those big people, those that wake up early and go to work. Those men and women that pretend to be strong and tell their children that you will turn up. Of course you´ll turn up, you have to. It´s those men and women that work so hard, with so much to do. Always worried about the future, the present and now. You see, there are evil people out there. Your too small to understand that, too young to know the difference.

I´m sorry Maddie but i just don´t know what else to tell that little boy. What to say to him anymore. How can anyone lose someone you love so much. How? And if that little girl was my child. What would I do? Where would I get the strength to carry on? The strength to keep on fighting, searching, praying... What I can do from here is very little, but I promise that I will pray for you tonight and then when the sun rises once again and that little boy asks: "Has the little girl turned up?" I promise I will say no, but that God is watching over you and keeping you safe...