Mike Ainscough woke up on Tuesday morning to find a bunch of flowers leaning against the garden gate of his home in Southport.
“I saw it and I thought ‘It should be in water’, so I went to get a bucket,” the 82-year-old said. Soon there would be hundreds of bunches arrayed alongside his garden wall, with cuddly toys, sparkly balloons and handwritten messages to the children killed and injured at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
Ainscough’s home sits on the edge of a police cordon closing off the street where the knife attack took place on Monday, and has become the site of an ever-growing impromptu memorial.
He is now its unofficial caretaker. As more flowers were brought by a steady stream of people on Thursday evening, Ainscough trimmed the stems, mixed water and packets of flower food in buckets donated by a local Sainsbury’s, and gently arranged the bouquets.
Every night, he takes the dozens of cuddly toys left by children into his home so they don’t get damp, and then sits them on a sun lounger and bench the following morning.
“I felt it was something I could do,” Ainscough said, as he worked through the new donations. “Hundreds of people have been coming here, and a lot of them are grieving. I’m standing in the house and seeing grown adults weeping. I had one man who said to me: ‘I’ve got grandchildren, how am I going to explain this to them?’”
At another spontaneous tribute site at the other end of the police cordon, people lit candles as darkness closed in and wrote messages in multicoloured chalk on the pavement. A young girl in a dress carefully placed a Barbie on the words “keep dancing”.
Southport is still in shock at the killing of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, in a brutal attack that left eight other children injured, as well as the class instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes.
A support hub was set up for anyone affected by the attack at Southport FC’s ground, with tea, coffee and scones on offer alongside information on grief counselling and children’s therapy.
Andy Burgess, the club’s head of football operations, said it will keep its doors open to anyone in need. “This week, we’ve seen strength in the community unlike anything before – a community that has experienced unthinkable grief and fear, but has banded together to support friends, family, and strangers.”
Victim care services are being coordinated by the Merseyside police and crime commissioner, Emily Spurrell, who said she is not aware of any other tragedy of this magnitude in the region.
“It’s a really tight-knit community, everyone knows someone who was affected, and that’s why the impact of what happened is so wide,” she said.
“Trauma can recur or be triggered at any point. Whether it’s tomorrow, whether it’s in a week or a month – the funerals, the trial, there will be so many trigger points.
“This is a long journey and we will do everything we can.”
As well as investigating the attack and supporting victims, local police are also bracing themselves for potential further protests following the disorder that broke out after Tuesday’s vigil, and the riots that have spread across the country.
On Friday, there was a heavy police presence in Southport, with countless vans circling the streets while officers patrolled on horseback and foot.
While violent far-right demonstrations have spread to other towns and cities, Southport had so far been spared a repeat, but rumours of a new “protest” on Saturday had left it on edge.
Spurrell says Merseyside police are monitoring “rumour and speculation around potential future events” and had drawn in support from neighbouring forces, while putting temporary stop and search powers in place in Southport.
“We’re making sure we’ve got the right response in place,” she said. “I’d encourage people to remember this is about the memory of those three girls and the people who are injured.”
On Friday morning, recovery work was still going on at the site of Tuesday night’s riot, where marchers shouting racist and Islamophobic slogans attacked a mosque, set fires and then turned on police with a hail of bricks and rocks.
More than 50 police officers were injured, including some left with broken bones and concussion, with footage showing members of the mob cheering as missiles hit.
Chris McGlade, chair of the Merseyside Police Federation, called the violence “unprecedented”, adding: “Those officers are getting over Monday’s incident themselves, then they have been the victims of a vicious attack.
“Police officers are just part of this community, we’re just humans who come into work to do a job. We take an oath to protect the public, we don’t expect to end up in A&E. Time will only tell the legacy of this for those officers.”
The Windsor Mini Mart, which was looted and vandalised, is still boarded up, its windows covered in tarpaulin, as the owners make repairs and put their stock back on the shelves.
Owner Chanaka Balasuriya, 47, watched his family business being destroyed on CCTV from his nearby home after a neighbour pleaded with him to close the shop and leave as the situation deteriorated on Tuesday night. “My children were crying, we called the police but they couldn’t get close to it,” he said.
“I thought they were going to burn it down, there’s a mother with a child living upstairs.”
Balasuriya said that, when he returned in the early hours of the morning, the street “looked like a war zone”, with fires burning among piles of rubble.
He hopes to reopen his shop on Monday thanks to a flood of support and donations from local residents, who mounted a huge clean-up operation that has almost completely repaired the street.
More than £14,000 has been raised by an online fundraising page started by a neighbour, while local builders’ firms have offered to do the necessary work for free.
“At one point we thought ‘That’s it now, we’re not going to do it’, but now I don’t want to give up,” Balasuriya said.
A few doors down, a local builder Steven Heneghan is repairing a wall that was ripped up by rioters.
“We’ve got to do what we can. We’ve stopped our other jobs,” the 27-year-old said. “It just shows what this community is really about, and it’s not what happened the other night.”
Over the road, worshippers gathered for Friday prayers at the Southport mosque.
Lorna, who asked to give only her first name, offered flowers and doughnuts to those arriving. She saw the mosque come under attack and said she wanted to replace the “ugliness with friendliness”, adding: “We don’t need this, we are a town grieving.”
The imam, Ibrahim Hussein, was trapped inside with worshippers when the mosque came under attack and feared that if the police were overwhelmed rioters would break in and “burn the place down”.
“They were saying that they would protest in front of the mosque but it was not a protest, it was destruction,” he said, describing how the mosque had its windows smashed and wall reduced to rubble.
“But this is a beautiful community. They came here at six o’clock in the morning the next day. I was thinking, where am I going to start? And they’d done it all.”
Hussein says that in the coming days, the mosque was inundated with so many donations of food and gifts that they sent them on to a local food bank, while flowers were sent to the tribute sites.
As he stands outside, passing cars beep and wave to show their support, and passersby stop to express their condolences. “The community is wonderful – we always knew it. There is talk of more protests but the police are assuring us that they are here. We just have to take it as it comes. We’re not going to close the mosque, not for those people.”
Local forums and social media continue to buzz with ideas for helping the area affected by the riot, and commemorating the lives lost in Monday’s attack and supporting their loved ones.
Andrew Brown, a father-of-two who founded the Stand Up For Southport website, said there is a “lot of processing and a lot of trauma still to come for so many people”.
“Any murder is horrific, but primary school children in such a targeted cruel atrocity … The shock will be there for a very very long time,” he added. “So many people feel helpless.’”
The town centre and seafront are quieter than they should be in peak summer holiday season, although day trippers are starting to return and holidaymakers continue to play crazy golf and eat ice-cream in the sun.
Outside the town hall, a pink handwritten sign reads: “Dance for ever little ones. Our hearts and town are broken, but our spirit and community are strong.”
