"Dunblane lived in black for about 10 days, completely," said Flaws, who supplied the floral arrangements for all the funerals. "Everybody you saw was either going to a funeral or coming from a funeral."
In the days that followed, 13 of the children and teacher Gwen Mayor were laid to rest on a hill, one next to the other. The setting resembles a classroom, with the teacher at the head of the class. The graves of the children are adorned with fresh flowers and stuffed animals. There are cartoons and figures of superheroes on some of the tombstones. The sounds of windmills and a fountain can be heard at the site. Some say it's the children playing.
The people of Dunblane will not forget them. They tell the story of the children on stained-glass windows at the Holy Family Church. They tell it using doves and flowers and light. But they don't speak of that day.
"Andy hardly mentioned it," said Shirley Erskine, Murray's grandmother. "He really didn't speak about it."
Sadly for Dunblane, it was all the world knew about the town to speak of.
"Nobody had ever heard of Dunblane -- hardly anyone outside of Scotland anyway," said Father Basil O'Sullivan of the Holy Family Church in Dunblane. "'Tis known as the place where young children die."
While on holiday, residents stopped saying they were from Dunblane for fear of the ensuing conversation. They needed to escape the clouds. Many simply said they were from "central Scotland" or "just outside Stirling." The clouds were too heavy.
But after the tragedy, the children needed to play. Andy Murray needed to play. His mother said the family "just tried to keep everything as normal" as they could. So Andy played tennis. She asked Andy's uncle, Niael Erskine, to hit with Andy.
"After about 10 minutes, he said, 'Enbo' -- which is what he calls me -- 'you're rubbish,'" Erskine said. "I said, 'Yeah, you make me feel rubbish,' because he was hitting the ball with much more consistency than I was able to."
Uncle Niael didn't play with Andy anymore after that. Andy was getting better.
He won the under-14 national championship in 1999 and then the U.S. Open juniors in 2004. Andy's tennis provided his hometown with a bit of unexpected civic pride. For Dunblane, some light was beginning to peek through the clouds.
"I think, deep within him, that he did want to do something to put Dunblane on the map for the right reasons, rather than the wrong reasons," said Shirley, Andy's grandmother.
With each tournament, Andy was getting closer to his goal. The United Kingdom might have had someone to rally around in Murray, but he belonged to Dunblane.
