How Southport mum told daughter about stabbing

Charlotte Brown had an unimaginable task as a mother.

She had to tell her eight-year-old daughter Poppy that her friend from school, Alice Aguiar, had been killed in the Southport attack. And she also had to tell her little girl that a woman who ran a yoga class Poppy attended after school, Leanne Lucas, was also badly hurt.

“We’ve been open and honest – no question is a bad question,” she told the BBC.

“I think you have to let them ask the questions and you have to be ready to answer them.”

Poppy attends Churchtown Primary School in Southport where Alice was in the year above and the friends went to choir together.

Ms Lucas – who ran the Taylor Swift dance class attacked by a knifeman – is understood to be recovering in hospital.

But three children, including Alice, died in the attack, which also left eight children and two adults seriously injured.

Poppy told her mum Alice was a beautiful singer, who often got the choir solos. “She’ll be a big miss,” Poppy said.

Charlotte found out about the attack on Monday from a friend and said it felt impossible to keep it from her daughter.

“At eight they’re nosy, they listen to everything. And Poppy was asking over and over again what had happened.”

Poppy and her mum recalled how, on Monday afternoon, they’d seen a lot of police cars and ambulances. Poppy said her mum told her people had been stabbed at the dance class.

“We didn’t know names but I literally knew that Alice was definitely in there,” Poppy told the BBC. “And when we found out she was in hospital I crossed my fingers.”

Later, Alice was named as one of the three girls who had died.

“I saw the picture,” said Poppy. “And I said what is wrong with her? And you said she has died from the incident.”

“I don’t think she’s fully got it, that she has gone,” Charlotte said. But she has kept on letting Poppy ask questions any time she has needed.

“I think it’s the fact that she knows someone – that’s confused her more,” Charlotte explained.

They have been to the cordon twice to lay flowers, whenever Poppy has wanted to. “I think it’s important she sees the love and support.”

“It made me feel as though I was giving them to Alice,” Poppy said.

What has happened has been one challenge. But Charlotte says she has had one question from Poppy that she cannot answer: “Her first question was why – and I didn’t have the answer. No one knows why.”

She drew her daughter’s attention to all those who came together to attend the vigil.

Even on Thursday, in their garden, Poppy and her mum talk about who and why would do such an atrocious thing.

“I don’t think anyone can answer that, sweetie pie.” Charlotte says.

Charlotte and Poppy said they had kept crossing my fingers all week for the other girls.

The connection between this community and the classes at the Hart Centre is something that is palpable with every person you speak to locally. Charlotte is no different.

“I spoke to Leanne about four or five weeks ago, and I was telling her how much Poppy loved her class,” she said, adding that the stories of Leanne’s efforts to protect the children on Monday made her feel proud and “showed what a lovely lady she is.”

Poppy was given a flyer for the Taylor Swift dance class this week, but she could not go.

“Everyone loved Taylor – and she loves her yoga teacher, so it was just a win-win,” Charlotte explained.

But something came up. “It’s awful to say, but we’re thankful. And when you know people that have been affected, it’s heart-breaking.”

Charlotte says it was perhaps what had happened after the attacks that has unsettled her daughter the most.

“She was more scared of the rioting than she was of the stabbing,” she said. “She was petrified that it was going to come down her road and we had to explain to her that there were lots of police.”

“The people that were involved should be (ashamed), they really should,” Charlotte added.

Charlotte and Poppy, and dozens more parents here, even thousands across the country, are just at the beginning of processing the events of Monday afternoon. It is already on Charlotte’s mind how the community will come together to do “something special” for when the children return to school in September.

“Maybe we will sing a song for Alice,” Charlotte and Poppy said.

But for now, many more questions will have to remain unanswered.

“I don’t understand it, no one does. I don’t understand how Monday has flipped the town upside down. It’s scary.”

Axel Muganwa Rudakubana , 17, has been charged with murder and attempted murder.