As rain began to fall on the streets of Wallasey today, another coffin carrying another murdered young woman was carried into church for another painful funeral.
Elle Edwards was just 26 when the mind boggling recklessness of a gunman, who sprayed the front of a busy pub with bullets, snatched her bright future away. And, in the words of her dad, Tim Edwards, "it was all for nothing".
Today Mr Edwards appeared dignified and stoic as he greeted and embraced friends and relatives outside St Nicholas Church in Wallasey. No doubt he was making every effort to hold it together for his family. But who can bear to imagine the depths of despair he must have felt as he shouldered his daughter's coffin.
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Popular, glamorous, fun-loving beautician Elle was carried to her final resting in suitable style, on the back of a horse-drawn carriage. The white of the four horses and their bright, pink, feathered head-dresses contrasted with the ashen faces of mourners, dressed mostly in black.
Dozens of locals also lined Newton Avenue outside the church to pay their respects, watching on in silence as Elle arrived and left on her final journey to a private burial ceremony.
What happened outside the Lighthouse Inn pub on Christmas Eve was the latest fatal shooting in Merseyside since August 16 last year, following a 13 month gap in firearms murders. It can feel as if the people of Merseyside have run out of ways to express their collective shock and outrage after Sam Rimmer, then Ashley Dale, then Olivia Pratt-Korbel, then Jackie Rutter and finally Elle Edwards all met the same fate.
However, while sometimes it is hard to remember after the events of 2022, Merseyside is not a murder capital, it does not face the same issues as, say, Chicago or Baltimore across the Atlantic where people are shot dead with numbing regularity all year round. Murder is still a shocking crime here, and when guns are involved even more so.
In a way that sense of shock, that sense of outrage shows this is not who we are. Those trigger-happy men and, in the words of Chief Constable Serena Kennedy, their "petty and pathetic" disputes, are the aberration.
During the service today, Reverend Jeff Stables read a homily based in part on his discussions with Elle's family. He spoke of the need for peace, and importantly for hope.
He told the gathered mourners: "May I also share something Elle's grandad George said the other day, and again I hope he doesn't mind. George said that we needed to leave this place today with hope in our hearts.
"How true is that? If we lose hope, then the darkness of evil has gained a victory. All of us have been touched by the darkness in these past weeks at one level or another, it is just as Tim said. What happened on Christmas Eve affected so many people, and it continues to do so, we were all touched by the darkness of evil.
"But the light of hope shines even in the deepest darkness, it shines in every kind word, in every embrace, in every good deed. There may not have been much said about it, but the light of hope shone on that dark night. The light of hope shone in the goodness of those who were able to act to try and save Elle. Elle was not abandoned in the darkness.
"The light of hope shone in the goodness of those who tended the wounded, who supported the fearful. It shone in those who offered words of comfort, who lit candles, who said prayers. And the light of hope will continue to shine every time somebody stands up and says 'this must stop'."
There are reasons to hope. There has rarely been more focus on disrupting the clandestine networks of organised crime causing misery in Merseyside than right now.
Police forces around the country are pioneering new prevention strategies, such as the Home Office backed 'Clear, Hold, Build', which not only aims to clear out criminal gangs in traditional policing operations, but also educate and fortify communities against their return.
Merseyside has had a Violence Reduction Partnership running for a few years now, based on hugely successful models that slashed homicide rates in cities such as Glasgow and Cali, Colombia.
There are also fantastic and hugely effective pieces of work being carried out every day by volunteers and charity workers in the city to tackle attitudes in young people, that if left unchecked can harden into murder and gang violence.
Elle's dad has also spoken of using the tragedy to do some good in the community, and indicated a charitable foundation will be set up in her name to "break the cycle of violence".
The sadness, trauma and shock of the final months of 2022 will have felt overwhelming at times for communities in Merseyside, but there are solutions, solutions that desperately need the funding to remain in place when the glare of the national media focuses somewhere else.
As Reverend Stables said today: "Even in the midst of grief, of anger, of shock, of bewilderment, the light of hope will surface, and hope will sustain us even through the darkest days. If we abandon hope then we allow the dark deeds of others to ensnare us and hold us captive.
"[Elle's grandad] George hit the nail on the head when he said 'we need to leave this place with hope in our hearts', and we must do that for ourselves, and for the communities we live in. Let us be people of hope."
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