Madeleine McCann’s mother reveals details about child’s disappearance in new book

The mother of Madeleine McCann, the young girl who disappeared during a family vacation in Portugal, has written a new book with details on the case and how it has affected the family.

In the book, "Madeleine," Kate McCann says the abduction of her daughter four years ago caused her so much pain and grief she often had suicidal thoughts.

"It's quite frightening when I see myself in those early days," she writes, as reported in the Guardian. "To me I look incredibly fragile and confused and lost." She says the public branded her a "cold, emotionless woman," but inside she was on the verge of a breakdown.

McCann describes in the book wanting to flee from the horror that her life had become and drown herself in the sea.

"I had an overwhelming urge to swim out across the ocean, as hard and as fast as I could; to swim and swim and swim until I was so far out and so exhausted I could just allow the water to pull me under and relieve me of this torment," she writes. "I wasn't keeping that desire to myself, either. I was shouting it out to anyone who happened to be in the room. Both this urge and the expression of it were, I suppose, an outlet for the crucifying anguish.

"Somehow, inflicting physical pain on myself seemed to be the only possible way of escaping my internal pain."

Madeleine, then four years old, went missing while the family was on vacation in Portugal on May 3, 2007. Her parents and their friends were eating at a restaurant in the holiday complex while Madeleine was sleeping in the room.

Kate McCann writes in the book that she thinks the case began with a comment in a restaurant reservation book at the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz giving information on where the parents would be eating while the children slept, AFP reports.

The case made headlines around the world and triggered a massive investigation, but the girl was never found.

Madeleine's parents insist they will continue the search for their daughter, AFP reports. Proceeds from the book are intended to help pay for that.

The book will be published Thursday in Britain. It will be Madeleine's eighth birthday.