Jim Millar (20), Belfast: ‘He was engaged to be married to a lovely girl...He was so happy’

The inquests into the deaths of the 48 young people who died in the Stardust fire in Artane, Dublin in 1981 feature pen portraits of each of the deceased by bereaved family members. Find all of the portraits and more coverage here

I am telling this story as all our family has died, leaving only me to tell it. It will be short, as his life was.

There were three boys and two girls in the family as well as Mum and Dad. I am the oldest and Jim was next. As there is only 18 months between us, we were always close.

I was a tomboy, always following Jim and his mates around, but he looked after me. Jim was my brother, but he was also my best friend, and he had his whole life ahead of him. He was engaged to be married to a lovely girl called Marion. He was so happy.

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Jim, before all this here, travelled the world in the Merchant Navy and then he picked Dublin to settle down in and hopefully raise his family. He had left the North after our dad encouraged him, to keep him out of harm’s way – away from the Troubles in Northern Ireland at the time. That decision had always come back many times to haunt our dad who blamed himself for Jim’s death.

The last Christmas before Jim died, his mates all came up from Dublin ... We really had a wonderful Christmas, everybody together again.

Jim was a beautiful person and a loving son and brother and uncle. Waving him goodbye after Christmas, little did we know it was the last time we would see him alive. We parted saying my friend Patsy and me would see them all on Valentine’s weekend. Jim had invited us down to Dublin and they had booked tickets to a dance competition in the Stardust.

We never made it down as things happened at home, so we couldn’t go. As a result of us not going down, his fianceé came back up from Dublin and some of his mates decided to work over Valentine’s weekend instead, but Jim and Bobby went to the disco that night.

On Saturday when the papers reported the fire, his fianceé phoned us up and said that not to worry because they had said that they weren’t going.

But later on my dad got told on his own at home by the police at about 6 o’clock in the evening. We were told his cry could be heard all over the estate.

So many lives were destroyed that night. To see my mum and dad going to pieces was heartbreaking. What was worse, was our younger brother, Martin. We found out later that he and Jim got into a silly argument and as Jim went out of the door, Martin yelled ‘I wish you were dead’. He was only 12 years old, but he closed himself up and it was weeks before we learned what had taken place. Martin was another one as well as my Dad who blamed himself, and up to his death three years ago he never got over it. None of us got over it.

Everybody keeps saying to us we were lucky to have not gone down that weekend. I have never seen it that way. Maybe seeing justice being done will help a little, but it’s been a long time coming. Too long. Maybe then, they all can rest in peace at last.