Matthew Oldfield
4078 “Okay. Do you remember the Monday evening, it probably would have been your first trip to the Tapas Bar, I would imagine?”
Reply “Erm, I remember it only in terms of it then became the same as it was every, every evening. So after the first night they ate they said, you know, it was all, you know, it was nice. Erm, because the options for eating in the evening, because Rachael actually booked the restaurant for the rest of the week after the first time on the Sunday night when they ate and it was all very successful. And because, the whole point of going to MARK WARNER, apart from, you know, the sort of the sport and things, is this issue of child care, which of course has changed for us completely now, but when you go to (inaudible) or you go to the other ones, they tend to be sort of a compound, I mean, they’re not sealed from people from the outside, but they’re sort of self-enclosed, erm, there’s a warden sort of at the gate house, but you can walk in and out pretty freely, and they do a baby listening service, erm, so they have a number of the Nannies who are on rota who will sit at the bottom of the, Lemnos was sort of like lots of little cottages, not cottages, little sort of flats, apartments going up on two hillsides, and so they would walk round, erm, you know, round and went past all the, erm, apartments and have a listen at the door to see whether anybody was crying or upset and at the start of the evening, as you went past, you’d give them your room number and where you were going to be and then if they heard anybody crying you’d then be taken back up the, erm, you know, they’d find you in the restaurant and you’d go up to the door and see what was going on. And that was the sort of thing that we were looking for when we booked the MARK WARNER because, it kind of seems funny when you look at it from this perspective, but at the time, it was just about having a safe environment where, you know, the kids, because all the time and all through this, the thing you ever worry about is, if I leave them alone and they’re, you think that they’re safe because they’re all locked, you’re not really thinking that anything horrible would happen, you think, what happens if they wake up and they’re crying and you’re not there and, you know, they’re going to be upset and you think, well, you know, if they’ve got this then it’s going to be ten minutes at the most, erm, and it’s going to be awful and you’ll feel bad about it if it happens, but G***e is a really good sleeper and, you know, we’ve got that sort of safety net, so we were looking for that for Praia da Luz. And it was one of the things that made us think, maybe we shouldn’t go, because when we were trying to book, you know, it said it’s a village, it’s not enclosed, it’s sort of apartments throughout the village and, erm, there isn’t a baby listening service and we can’t guarantee that you’ll be together, you know, because I think there were three centres, there’s one up by the Millennium, there’s one Ocean Club and then there was the one near the main entrance, and so we were concerned that if one member of the group, we were all going, oh perhaps we’ll be the Billy no mates, the really unpopular ones will get stuck at the Millennium and, you know, we won’t be able to, we won’t be able to go out and visit our friends because we’re not going to leave, you know, we’re not going to leave to, erm, to go and see them and we won’t be able to share child care and so it would be fairly difficult and it was a big issue because they couldn’t guarantee, the couldn’t allocate the rooms, erm, for us and they said it’ll have to wait until you get in the resort, erm, but in the end it was sort of quite quiet and so they sort of could stick us really close together. I can’t remember why I started talking about that?”00.33.03 4078 “It is because we talked about your first night at the Tapas Bar and then you came on to say the routine would have been the same as every night”.
Reply “Right”.
00.33.07 4078 “So you were just going to cover the arrangements that had been put in place for checking on the children?”
Reply “Right. And so the Tapas seemed to fit because, because you didn’t feel far away from the room, it felt so quiet and very safe and it was sort of a minutes walk, if that, you know, the actual distance seemed quite, you know, you were sort of falsely reassured, but obviously at this point you could see the back of your apartment, not hugely clearly, but you can sort of see the apartment block, erm, you know, you could see if the light came on, for instance, or you felt that you’d be able to see if the light came on and, you know, because we were sort of going what we thought was every sort of ten or fifteen minutes, basically between courses, then you could go. And rather than go and find another restaurant where not everybody would be able to go because somebody would need to be babysitting, it seemed most sensible just to, to stay put in the same place, erm, because the food was pretty reasonable and just trekking everywhere else was going to make it such a headache for the child care. And then this issue of, well you do just put the kids in with babysitters, because they were in a sort of a Nanny sort of a night drop-off service, but that kind of felt less safe, in that, one, they wouldn’t sleep or G***e wouldn’t, we’d be worried that she wouldn’t particularly sleep and she’d be worried and it’d be difficult to drop her off because she really didn’t like being dropped off at the Nursery, erm, which I always tried to avoid that chore, I did it on the Thursday, but she didn’t like it and she wouldn’t go to sleep particular well with sort of strangers in a room when people would be coming in and out to collect their children”.4078 “It would be unsettling for her”.
Reply “So it actually seemed a worse choice than just being close but not actually in the room (inaudible)”.
4078 “Was there an actual discussion between the group of you as to the sort of fifteen minute checks or ten minute checks or whatever or was it something that you as a couple had decided on and then the circumstances during the week meant that everyone had sort of taken it in turns to check?”
Reply “No, we pretty much checked our, well certainly we checked our own and it was only the last night that we offered to check for Gerry and Kate. It just, we are sort of fairly similar, our sort of views on sort of child care and that it was important, we’re sort of from the same background, we have sort of similar issues about sort of child rearing, which is why we sort of get on and there was nothing obvious that anybody would do anything particularly different. I mean, Russell and Jane sort of, erm, are sort of fairly relaxed and easy going, erm, and Dave and Fi are sort of a bit disorganised and a bit late and Gerry and Kate are much more organised and we sort of fit sort of between that end of between, between that end of the scale and Russell and Jane. So it was all sort of, it was just sort of natural, we didn’t decide, oh we’ll do this, it just sort of came at natural breaks, we’d come down and we’d go between sort of courses to sort of check, but we usually, we’d check our own and, as far as I know, that didn’t really change. Although, because it wouldn’t seem, certainly for Russell and Jane I’d be happy to check for their children because they know me and if, you know, they had been awake and I went in they wouldn’t be particularly, erm, you know, they wouldn’t be particularly shocked or surprised or not know who I was, but Gerry and Kate and their children I didn’t know them so well, so I wouldn’t and certainly at the beginning of the week have offered to check their children or assumed that that would be okay, it was only at the end of the week when we seemed to know each other better and our routines and everybody seemed to be doing the same thing that it seemed to be a nice thing to do to offer to save them a trip”.
00.36.24 4078 “Yeah”.
Reply “But, no, the, there was no sort of formal arrangement, as far as I know, for, for when we would go and check on the kids, we just went at sort of convenient times as we could”.
4078 “Okay. So I know you can’t specifically remember the Monday evening, but that began with the sort of weekly routine (inaudible)?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “Was there, had there been, also before the Thursday, had there been any problems with that routine?”
Reply “No, erm, anything out of the usual or out of the ordinary?”
00.36.58 4078 “Yeah, was there anything that sort of made you more anxious about G***e’s welfare?”
Reply “No”.
4078 “Had she woken up on any of those occasions?”
Reply “No, not that we know. I mean, she may have, I mean, she’s a good sleeper and we put her down about half seven, so we had about an hour to make sure that she settled well, but she was so tired from going to Nursery and being out and playing with all of the others that, erm, you know, she slept like a top. Erm, there was nothing unusual, we never sort of came in and had, had a sort of a worry about her not being happy or being well”.
4078 “So the overall effect of that, I am assuming, would be that you were really quite relaxed on that holiday, you were doing things that you enjoyed doing?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “G***e was occupied and happy?”
Reply “Yeah”.
4078 “And in the evening you had felt very sure that she was sufficiently tired for you to go and have your meal and you and Rachael would take it in turns to check on her?”
Reply “Yeah, yeah”.
4078 “Okay”.
Reply “I mean, we’d be, we’d be back by, there was only one time that we ever went out for a drink after the meal, so normally the meal would finish around sort of ten and we’d tootle off back. And I was ill on one night, Rachael was ill on the Wednesday night and so the Wednesday night was the only time that I stayed out any later than that. So it was, and we’d already (inaudible), so it was sort of like an hour and a half of time that we were away, maybe two hours”.
00.38.15 4078 “Was there anything different about the Tuesday that you can recall?”
Reply “Erm, no, I don’t remember anything specific about, about that day. I mean, Rachael became ill on the Tuesday night. G***e had, the thing that would have made it really horrible, when I became unwell, was for everybody then to go down with D and V, and we were sort of very worried that it would go first to G***e and then to the kids and then back up to everybody and completely ruin the entire trip for everybody, and G***e had loose nappies nearly every day, but until after Madeleine went, erm, disappeared, she was never sick and on a couple of occasions then she was sick, but she had sort of fairly loose nappies. Rachael became I think unwell over the Tuesday night and was, erm, mostly sort of pottering about the apartment on the Wednesday. But, apart from that, I don’t remember anything else about the Tuesday”.