Missing Madeleine McCann’s parents yesterday marked the sixth anniversary of her disappearance with a small ceremony in their village.

Kate and Gerry McCann attended an evening ceremony at the candle that burns continually in the centre of Rothley, Leicestershire, where they marked the occasion with prayers and poems.

The low-key ceremony marks six years since Madeleine, then nearly four, disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal’s Algarve on May 3, 2007, as her parents dined at a tapas restaurant with friends nearby.

Earlier this week, her parents said their family, including twins Sean and Amelie, now eight, had found a “new normality’’ since Madeleine’s disappearance.

The McCanns, who are in their mid-40s, said they continued to search for their daughter and remained as hopeful as ever – if not more so – as a case review by the Metropolitan Police was under way.

The thing for Kate and I was always about having a proper search and turning over every stone and we feel like that is being done

‘‘In many ways things haven’t changed and you could argue that, with the Met review two years in, we are actually in a better place because so much more information has been collated and lots of pieces of the jigsaw have been filled,’’ Mr McCann said.

‘‘It’s just about keeping looking, find out what’s happened to Madeleine and hopefully finding those responsible.’’

His wife said the Met Police seemed “more determined than ever”.

The couple said although they struggled with various occasions, including Madeleine’s birthday, they were coping with her absence.

‘‘Probably the last couple of years it’s been a new normality,’’ said the father.

“We have adapted to our situation. The thing for Kate and I was always about having a proper search and turning over every stone and we feel like that is being done.

“Of course, we miss Madeleine terribly but we still hope that we will find her.

‘‘We are still in the same situation and for us we have got to keep going until we find Madeleine and those responsible.’’

Madeline’s mother said twins Sean and Amelie, who were just two when their sister went missing, were coping well and were “no different to any other eight-year-old child”.

‘‘They have grown up knowing that Madeleine is missing, she is their big sister, we’re trying to find her and she should be back home with us.

‘‘As they get older and they wander on the internet and other things, there will be more questions, but going by how things have panned out so far, I think we will be alright, I think they’ll handle it well.’’

The couple admitted they found Madeleine’s birthday – May 12 – more difficult than the anniversary of her disappearance.

‘‘We both find that more difficult really because it’s her special day and we should be there celebrating it and we still do,” Kate McCann said.

‘‘We still celebrate her anyway, and the same will happen this year, we have a little birthday tea and a cake.

‘‘That’s a much harder day for us really.’’

But they insisted they have not given up hope and will continue the hunt for their daughter. Her husband said: ‘‘I think it’s still about being vigilant and to remind people that we are looking for a 10-year-old girl, and not a three/four-year-old at the time.

‘‘But if they have any information, they think they have seen someone who could be Madeleine, then the route is to contact the police.’’

The mother added: ‘‘I think to encourage everybody, it’s six years on, but the way the Met review is going is really positive and with that, new hope.’’

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “Detectives from the Metropolitan Police Service continue their investigative review into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, liaising closely with the Portuguese authorities.”

Timeline of key events since Madeleine’s disappearance

2007

• May 3: Kate and Gerry McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, leave their three children asleep in their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in southern Portugal while they dine with friends at a nearby tapas restaurant.

Nothing is amiss when Gerry McCann checks on the youngsters at just after 9pm, but when his wife goes back at about 10pm, she finds three-year-old Madeleine missing.

Jane Tanner, one of the friends eating with the McCanns, later reports seeing a man carrying a child away earlier that night.

• May 14: Detectives take Anglo-Portuguese property developer Robert Murat in for questioning and make him an arguido, or formal suspect.

Officers also search the home he shares with his mother in Praia Da Luz, just 90 metres from where the youngster vanished.

• May 30: The McCanns meet the Pope in Rome in the first of a series of trips around Europe and beyond to highlight the search for their daughter.

• August 6: A Portuguese newspaper reports that British police sniffer dogs found traces of blood on a wall in the McCanns’s holiday apartment.

• August 11: Exactly 100 days after Madeleine disappeared, investigating officers publicly acknowledge for the first time that she could be dead.

• September 7: During further questioning of the McCanns, detectives make them both arguidos in their daughter’s disappearance.

• September 9: The couple flies back to England with two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

• October 2: Goncalo Amaral, the detective in charge of the inquiry, is removed from the case after criticising the British police in a Portuguese newspaper interview.

2008

• July 21: The Portuguese authorities shelve their investigation and lift the arguido status of the McCanns and Robert Murat.

• July 24: Amaral publishes a book about the case, entitled The Truth of the Lie, in which he alleges that the young girl died in her family’s holiday flat on the day she went missing.

• August 4: Thousands of pages of evidence from the Portuguese police files in the exhaustive investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance are made public.

They reveal details of the lines of inquiry pursued by detectives, witness statements and scores of previously unknown sightings of the little girl.

2009

• January 29: Nearly £2 million (€2.4 million) was raised for the official fund to find Madeleine in the first 10 months after she went missing, Companies House accounts show.

• September 9: A Portuguese judge bans further sale or publication of Amaral’s book following legal action by the McCanns. This injunction is later upheld before being overturned on appeal.

2011

• May 12: Scotland Yard launches a review of the case after a request from Home Secretary Theresa May supported by Prime Minister David Cameron.

2012

• April 25: Scotland Yard detectives say they believe Madeleine could still be alive, release an age-progression picture of how she might look as a nine-year-old, and call on the Portuguese authorities to reopen the case.

• April 26: Portuguese police say they have found no new material that will allow them to reopen their investigation.

• July 10: Kate McCann launches a nationwide campaign to find missing people. As new ambassador for the charity Missing People, she launches a network of billboards which will publicise the cases of individuals whose whereabouts are no longer known.

• November 30: In the wake of the Leveson report, the couple urges Prime Minister David Cameron to embrace its findings, saying if he does not, then giving evidence at the inquiry will have been “almost useless”.

• December 21: In a Christmas message on the Find Madeleine website, the McCanns say the festive season will “never be as it should”.

2013

• February 6: A DNA sample from a girl in New Zealand is sent to British police to quash the suggestion that she could be Madeleine.

• February 17: The McCanns brand plans for a new press regulator backed by a Royal Charter, “a compromise of a compromise”, that do not go far enough in holding the press to account.

• February 21: Retired solicitor Tony Bennett, 65, who published claims that Madeleine McCann’s parents caused her death, receives a suspended jail sentence.

Mr Justice Tugendhat said Bennett, of Harlow, Essex, deliberately flouted legal undertakings, given in November 2009, not to repeat allegations about the couple. Finding him guilty of contempt of court at London’s High Court, he said Bennett’s conduct was so serious that nothing less than a custodial sentence of three months suspended for one year would reflect the harm he had done.