Her favourite rag doll lies on the Snow White duvet on the bed, and My Little Pony figures are scattered on the floor next to the pink boots five-year-old Mari Luz Cortes liked to wear at weekends.

This small bedroom is now a shrine to Mari Luz, the place her mum, Irene Suarez, and dad, Juan Jose, retreat to when they’re overcome with grief.

They spend agonising hours in the room, wishing they could scoop their daughter into their arms and cuddle her one more time.

The last contact they had with their little girl was on January 13 this year – the day Mari Luz vanished as she was walking home from a local sweet shop in Huelva, Spain.

Sadly, on March 7, Mari Luz’s decomposed body was washed up in a river estuary, in the same clothes she’d disappeared in two months earlier.

Her disappearance had been linked to the Madeleine McCann case, since Mari Luz and her family lived just 90 minutes from the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz, where four-year-old Maddie went missing.

After hearing about Mari Luz’s disappearance, Gerry, 40, and Kate McCann, 39, produced leaflets in Spanish bearing photos of both girls under the headline: ‘Do not forget us’.

A year on, the McCanns still have no idea what has happened to their daughter but for Irene, 30, and Juan Jose, 34, the terrible waiting is finally over.

“I was having coffee at home with my family and planning the next search for Mari Luz when a policeman called to say they’d found her body,” Irene says.

“It was the ending we’d been dreading, but never finding out would have been more painful. At least I know my daughter’s suffering has ended.”

The McCanns haven’t had that closure.

They continue to live in limbo, facing the first anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance with few answers to their many questions.

One lead they are desperate to pursue is the questioning of the man suspected of killing Mari Luz – convicted paedophile Santiago del Valle García – who is currently awaiting trial.

He’s accused of snatching Mari Luz and suffocating her in his flat just yards from her home.

Gerry and Kate, of Rothley, Leicestershire, are understandably anxious to know where the 52-year-old Spaniard was on May 3, 2007 – the day Maddie vanished.

For Irene, a street seller, and Juan Jose, a former professional footballer-turned-construction worker, the anger over their loss was compounded by the discovery that del Valle should have been in jail the day Mari Luz vanished.

He had been given a 28-month suspended sentence following convictions for indecently assaulting a nine-year-old girl.

A restraining order was later imposed on him for stalking another youngster, but he was not sent to jail.

Irene and Juan Jose are now planning to sue the judge for not jailing del Valle.

They’re also campaigning for a change in the law so local communities know if paedophiles are living in their area.

The ruling would be similar to the News of the World’s Sarah’s Law, which would give parents the right to know if a sex offender lived in their neighbourhood.

“I think lives can be saved if people know where they are,” says Juan Jose.

He and his wife have a poignant message for the McCanns.

“They must remain patient and not lose their serenity. Hate for the perpetrator doesn’t give you peace,” says Juan Jose.

“The truth will come out in the end.”

Photography: Solarpix.com, PA