It is hard to recover from an enormity, and Southport, north of Liverpool, suffered two. On July 29th last year a 17-year-old named Axel Rudakubana murdered three young girls and tried to kill many others. The next day, as rumours spread that the killer was a Muslim asylum-seeker, a mob attacked a nearby mosque and a police van. The windows of the mosque are still covered with protective screens. Norman Wallis, who runs Adventure Coast Southport, an amusement park, says business is slow. He thinks that people hesitate to enjoy themselves, out of sympathy.
