On Sunday 4 March 2018, emergency services were called to what they believed was a straightforward medical incident – a middle-aged man and a young woman who had been taken ill on a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury.

It turned out to be anything but routine. The man was the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and the woman was his daughter, Yulia. They were the victims of a nerve agent attack blamed on a Russian hit squad.

A police officer, DS Nick Bailey, was also poisoned when he went to search Skripal’s house in Salisbury, and Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were taken ill at the end of June in the town of Amesbury, eight miles north of Salisbury, when they apparently found a container of the nerve agent novichok disguised as a perfume bottle. Sturgess sprayed some of it on her skin and died.

As the area hopes for a simpler 2019, four people reflect on an extraordinary period for Salisbury and Amesbury, and express their hopes for an overdue period of normality and revival.

Tracy Daszkiewicz, the director of public health at Wiltshire council

Tracy Daszkiewicz: ‘There was an apparent contradiction between the low-risk message and the hazmat suits.’ Photograph: Sam Frost/Guardian

In the run-up to the novichok attack, Salisbury had been dealing with a wintry storm known as the beast from the east.

“On the Monday morning [5 March], we had just finished dealing with the snow,” Daszkiewicz said. “We knew straight away what had happened in Salisbury was unprecedented. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t happen in Salisbury; it doesn’t happen anywhere, actually.

“There’s no rulebook. You are working in a multilayered, multidisciplinary space, working across government. You’ve got an investigation running, you’ve got a public health process running. We were also dealing with an issue of national security, which is a gamechanger in the way you operate and way you think.”

Working closely with Public Health England, one of Daszkiewicz’s key roles was to try to say whether the people of Salisbury were safe. The oft-repeated line was that the risk to residents was “low”, but this claim was undermined by the sight of service personnel in hazmat suits.

“There was an apparent contradiction between the low-risk message and the hazmat suits,” Daszkiewicz said. The job of public health officials became more difficult when Rowley and Sturgess fell ill. The message that the risk was low no longer seemed convincing.

There isn’t widespread anxiety, but there is that constant need for reassurance for answers Tracy Daszkiewicz

“You can’t unsay what was said,” Daszkiewicz said. “Messages were given with the best intentions at the time. I didn’t agree with all of them. You have to go out with messages that are as reassuring as possible within the boundaries of truth.”

Having learned from the Salisbury attack, the agencies swung into action in Amesbury to explain and reassure. “For me, the key point was becoming very visible to the Amesbury community as quickly as possible. We had moved into the rounds of a same but different incident. Losing Miss Sturgess is the biggest tragedy in this – three children have lost their mum,” Daszkiewicz said.

Helping the people of Salisbury and Amesbury is a long-term job. “We usually see patterns of emotional wellbeing changing at about the six-to-eight months mark,” she said. This has happened in Wiltshire, where people are coming forward wanting to talk about what happened.

“There are more conversations now,” Daszkiewicz said. “It’s not high levels of distress, just conversations, questions. It could be that someone lives close to one of the sites or were working at one of the places that the Skripals visited. There isn’t widespread anxiety, but there is that constant need for reassurance for answers.” Checks will be carried out for at least five years, she added. “Support systems will need to be in place for as long as it takes. It’s an unknown.”

But are Salisbury and Amesbury safe now? “We’ve worked closely with a range of professionals. I think the people of Salisbury and Amesbury can live their lives safely. What has happened is unprecedented. We’ve lost somebody, it’s incredibly sad. I swing from getting on with it and being incredibly angry at the impact on our community. I’ve seen the impact on people who just want their lives back. There’s something nice about normal and ordinary. I see it as my job to give them back that.

Rachel Tribbeck: ‘We would have calls from people saying “We’re worried, we’re not coming in”.’ Photograph: Sam Frost/Guardian

Shop owners tried to carry on regardless in the days after the attack. “To begin with, we didn’t realise the magnitude of what had happened,” Tribbeck said. “Life carried on as normal, but then it kept gathering momentum. To have the international media, looking at little Salisbury was just so strange. It didn’t occur to us we were in risk or danger, but for the general public it was different.

“Some businesses were closed, others were reporting a 40-50% drop in footfall. Visits to the cathedral and other attractions were down. We would have calls from people saying ‘We’re worried, we’re not coming in’, and we would tell them, ‘Well, we’re here, we’re not foaming at the mouth’. It was very difficult.

“We battled on. We were just beginning to pick up and put it behind us when Charlie and Dawn fell ill. The consequences for Dawn were horrendous.”

Consultants have been brought in to “rebrand” Salisbury as it attempts to recover. “You can’t rename it or anything like that,” Tribbeck said. “But the idea is to look at what Salisbury is and what Salisbury means – gathering a picture of where we’re at. It’s about how to communicate what is special about Salisbury, how to conceptualise that and communicate that message to local people and the wider world. That’s what rebranding is about.”

Tribbeck was born in Salisbury and began working on Saturdays in the shop when she was 14. “Salisbury is unique. We are a city but we’re small, so we have the friendliness, that nice personal feel. You can walk down the street and people will say hello to you. We call it ‘Smallsbury’ because everyone knows everyone. There’s an overgrown village feel to it,” she said.

The suspects probably walked past the shopfront of HR Tribbeck & Son, which was established in 1905 by Rachel’s great grandfather Herbert. “One of the CCTV images of them was on the bridge just over there. I still have trouble believing it did happen here. It’s like something out of James Bond,” she said.

“I feel quite cross. I almost feel quite insulted they could come to our city, do something like that and think they could get away with it. What makes me really angry is the way they discarded this perfume bottle for someone else to pick up. That showed a complete lack of any humanity.”

Alistair Cunningham, the chairman of the South Wiltshire recovery coordination group

Alistair Cunningham: ‘To leave the weapon in the city was shocking.’ Photograph: Sam Frost/Guardian

Within days of the attack, planning for recovery began. “We’d been dealing with the beast from the east,” Cunningham said. “The snow went away, we felt we’ve done well and straight into this.

“From the first week, we were looking at recovery. It was clear there was going to be a big impact on the city. We had our recovery plan in draft by the end of the first week and were sharing it with government the week after.”

Cunningham said there was frustration over some of the outlandish stories that emerged in the media. “We had to bite our lip at some of them and gently bang our heads against a wall. You can’t always put the truth on the table. What we were trying to do was get as much information out to the public as we could. That’s why we organised all the community meetings,” he said.

At those public meetings, people asked how the authorities could be sure they were safe. “I think we were pretty open and honest,” said Cunningham. “We had to follow the evidence and advice.” The alternative would have been to shut down the city, the county, the ports the novichok may have been moved through.

The city is not back to normal yet. By the end of 2018, 1m fewer visits will have been made to Salisbury compared with 2017. Takings are 15%-20% down. “That’s their profit, their livelihood,” Cunningham said.

Decontamination work continues at the homes of Skripal and Rowley. “There was a difference in the two attacks. Salisbury was a targeted attack that caused collateral damage to the city. I don’t think anyone thought there would be such a callous disregard from the perpetrators that they would discard their weapon in a public space for someone to find. What they did [to the Skripals] was callous, but to leave the weapon in the city was shocking,” Cunningham said.

He paid tribute to the strength of Wiltshire, a county that is proud of its military history, particularly its links to the British army. “The population is used to the military. We didn’t have that additional factor of people being scared by the sight of troops on the street, which could have been a factor elsewhere,” Cunningham added.

A striking aspect of the poisonings has been the dedication of public servants. “We do these jobs because we believe in public service,” he said. “We do it for the satisfaction of delivering for the people of Wiltshire. You do it because it needed doing. That’s our job.”

Christian Sullivan, 25, a Salisbury resident and stonemason at the cathedral

Christian Sullivan: ‘In stonemasonry … things are measured in hundreds of years, not days or weeks or months.’ Photograph: Sam Frost/Guardian

“It seems like a long time ago now,” said Sullivan. “It was a normal day and suddenly the cordons began to pop up all over the place. To be honest, it was a bit of a shock that something was actually happening in Salisbury. It’s very quiet normally, not the sort of place you expect anything major to happen.”

Like many residents, Sullivan took the drama in his stride. “ I wasn’t really frightened, but we did start to keep an eye open for anything out of the ordinary. Once we knew there had been poisonings, we obviously didn’t go around picking objects up, but we didn’t have any control of it. Work carried on as normal, there were just a few routes through the city blocked off. It was a bit surreal seeing people walking around in protective suits. That was a bit sci-fi.”

There was grim amusement when the alleged attackers claimed they were in Salisbury to visit the cathedral and had gone there on two consecutive days because they were initially driven back by the slush.

“I suppose the cathedral is the obvious landmark. If they had said they had come for any other reason, it would have seemed even odder,” he said.

Sullivan said life in the stonemasons’ yard – and across the city – has carried on. “I would say for the most part, it’s back to normal. Everything seems to have calmed down, talk of novichok has quietened down. When it first happened, everybody was talking about it,” he said.

Salisbury – and the cathedral – are stolid. “The cathedral has been here for 800 years. In stonemasonry, we tend to think in a slightly different timeframe – things are measured in hundreds of years, not days or weeks or months. In the end, what happened won’t have a major impact on the cathedral or the city.”