The passing of 100 days since the disappearance of four-year-old Madeleine McCann will be marked today with prayers and gestures of support in Portugal and Britain.
But the milestone was also being reached amid growing signs of a change in the relationship between Madeleine's parents Gerry and Kate and Portuguese police investigating her disappearance.
There has been a hardening in the attitude of the Portuguese police towards the couple this week, according to one source.
On Monday Mr McCann met senior officers in the case at the British Consulate in the Algarve for a routine briefing. When he and his wife next spoke with detectives, two days later, the meeting took place at the police station in Portimao and the tone was much more formal, the source said.
There has been no suggestion from the police that the McCanns are now suspects, but the couple are understood to be apprehensive about the change.
It coincided with some Portuguese newspapers beginning to run reports suggesting police now believe Madeleine not was not abducted but died in the family holiday flat and even that the McCanns were suspects.
Responding to such "very hurtful" reports, the McCanns, from Rothley, Leicestershire, insisted yesterday that they would not be "bullied" into leaving Portugal by the growing backlash against them.
Mr McCann told the BBC: "It's incredibly difficult when people are implying that your daughter's dead and that you may have been involved in it." The McCanns will spend today quietly in Praia da Luz, the Algarve resort where she vanished on May 3rd.
Meanwhile stars from the worlds of rugby, football and horse racing will urge people at major sporting events around the UK to help find the young girl.
Mrs McCann said: "It doesn't get any easier. The 50th day seemed like such a long time when we marked that. We have doubled that now. "It is the 100th day, but it is just another day without Madeleine for us and for Madeleine, another of being separated from her family."
The McCanns will take their two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie to Praia da Luz's church of Nossa Senhora da Luz this morning for a special service of prayers of hope.
The readings, hymns and prayers have all been chosen with children in mind, and the couple have said other families are welcome to attend. The hymns to be sung include Away In A Manger and Lord Of The Dance, and there will be prayers for Madeleine and other missing children.
Father Haynes Hubbard, the Canadian Anglican priest for the Algarve, will lead the service.
PA