'No one expects to drop off their kids at a holiday club for them to never come home'

THEY came in their droves for the saddest of all processions.

- Jan Disley

Whole families, hand in hand, clutching bunches of flowers and soft toys.

Grown men, some carrying teddies, had tears in their eyes.

Schoolboys in football shirts and shorts, little girls in pastel dresses, a mother and her son on their bikes, youngsters in pushchairs.

All gathered to pay their respects at the scene of the Southport stabbings yesterday.

One five-year-old, Bella, sits in pink-trimmed her wheelchair holding a bouquet of red roses and sunflowers.

She watched the TV news and wanted to spend her pocket money on a floral tribute.

It's just hours since Bella's shocked father Alex, 35, leapt into the back seat of a car that had pulled up outside their house - the driver, hysterical, screaming for help, crying that her daughter had been stabbed.

He drove with the mother back towards the scene of the attack, and into the arms of the paramedics, just a few hundreds yards down the street.

Bella's mother Sarah, also 35, was at work at a local nursery, which went into immediate lockdown, its doors barred for the rest of the day.

Yesterday, all three came to pay tribute to the little girls who died and to all those still fighting for their lives.

Sarah said: "Bella is very switched on, she wanted to know what had happened. I just told her there was a mean man, but the police had got him.

"The atmosphere today feels flat, eerie, horrible. We're here because we wanted to pay our respects.

"Being a parent and working in childcare, it brings everything home and hits that much more." Little Charlie, eight, has written a note to go with his flowers and carefully tucks them in with all the others.

He tells his mother Gabrielle he wants to be at the vigil, which took place at the Atkinson venue in Southport last night.

He also wants to be a police officer when he grows up.