It is the stuff of nightmares.

Waking up to find your one-year-old quietly being lifted out of her cot. That was the experience of Siobhan Prescott who told The Sun that her little girl was allegedly "about to be snatched" by a member of cleaning staff at a hotel in Cyprus last month. She said that her daughter, Harper started crying which woke her and she started screaming as a woman, dressed in housekeeping uniform tried to lift the child out of the cot. Prescott said she started shouting at her partner for help - He ran in from the balcony and asked what the woman was doing in their room. He said she didn't seem to understand what they were saying and ran off crying.

“The only reason I woke up was because Harper screamed out, otherwise she could have been the next Maddie McCann. When I opened my eyes I thought I was dreaming I was in so much shock."

Madeline McCann was on holidays with her parents in a resort in Portugal 10 years ago when she disappeared aged just three. The couple now says that hotel management dismissed their complaints saying that the child was picked up while housekeeping was cleaning in order to check she was alright. They say that they feel like things could have been a lot worse if Harper hadn't woken up and made such a fuss. A British Foreign Office spokesman said: “We provided support to a British woman and her family following an incident in Cyprus in February.”