In an alternate universe, a black single mother leaves her three children alone in her hotel while she has dinner with friends. When she returns to check on them, one of them has been abducted. The police are unable to find the girl. The trail goes dead. The mother becomes a suspect then is cleared.
What little press attention the case gets castigates her with questions about her fitness to look after her remaining children, wondering why she left them alone in the first place. There is no high profile campaign.
No slew of charitable donations follows. No visit to the Pope is arranged. No book deal to fund an ongoing search. The woman's missing child is just one of the 70,000 minors who go missing in the EU every year. Four years later, the case is utterly forgotten.
Back in reality, four years after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, her mother has published a book on the case in the hope of refocusing public attention on the search.
An open letter from the McCanns published in The Sun has led the Prime Minister to request – though coming from him it is effectively an order – that the Metropolitan Police take up the search and committed extra financial support to the effort.
If you've lost a child, you'd better hope that you're what The Sun and The Daily Mail consider the right sort because they have the power to make the Prime Minister listen.
Of course the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is a tragedy but it is not the unusual case that the Prime Minister's spokespeople claim it is. It should be left in the hands of professionals, not toyed with by politicians who hope to curry favour.
It is reported that the Met had examined the case but ruled out any chance of significant developments if it reopened the files. David Cameron has reversed that decision to placate The Sun. He has allowed himself to be guilted into action by the open letter.
The McCanns have become public figures with a press team and the clout of News International going into bat for them. The Prime Minister's move implies that the McCann case is extra special because the media deems it to be.
The thousands of other children who are abducted every year are consigned to filing cabinets far more quickly. Many disappearances are never even publicised beyond the local papers. In death, as in life, if your face isn't right and you don't create the picture the tabloids crave, you're out of luck.
Kate McCann told The Sun: "I hope Mr Cameron will take responsibility for one of his most vulnerable citizens. Madeleine is not disposable. She should not be dismissed and brushed aside as just one child from just one family."
But the sad fact is, Madeleine is one child from one family and the resources of the Metropolitan Police should not be assigned on the basis of how much attention you can get and what amount of newsprint will be dedicated to the decision in the The Sun.
For other parents of missing children, viewing the way the media and politicians have treated the McCann case must be an uncomfortable experience. The media encourages Kate McCann to continue to fling out new theories (about her other children being drugged and Madeleine's new outfit tempting the abductor) while other more recent cases go unreported.
No good parent would ever give up hope that their child will be found but the idea that the McCann case, besides the incredible level of media attention, is somehow more deserving of police time is terribly wrong.
