The taxi-driver dropping Roisin home on a Sunday night pointed to the Cadbury's Roses tin on the window-sill and said she must have a romantic husband. Roisin paid the fare and rushed inside to let the baby-sitter away. She forgot about the chocolate tin.
Opening the blinds in the children's playroom the next morning, she noticed it still sitting on the windowsill. "I didn't think it was a surprise present from my husband but some of his mates had been helping us build a garage and I thought one had forgotten his lunch-box."
She brought in the tin and opened it at the table, her two-year old daughter by her side.
"There was a clock and wires inside. I'd never seen a bomb before but I thought it looked too basic for a bomb.
"I put the lid partially back on and called my husband. He peered in through the gap but didn't know what to make of it either. He rang his brother who came round and when he saw it he got the police."
The tin contained a pipe bomb which had been timed to explode the previous night but had not gone off. The RUC told Roisin it was in a highly dangerous state and could have killed her and her daughter.
Roisin - which is not her real name - and her husband have lived in the Ballynakilly Road in Coalisland, Co Tyrone, for six years. It's a religiously mixed area and there never has been any trouble.
"I'm shocked at what has happened. We get on great with our Protestant neighbours. There are no flags or sectarian graffiti around here. There wasn't even one incident during Drumcree.
"My husband is a car dealer and works with both sides of the community. We are totally uninterested in politics. There is no reason why we should be targeted.
"The RUC have advised us to install a security system and be vigilant for callers to our home. I never thought we would have to live like this, especially during the peace process."
Two new dissident loyalist paramilitary groups, the Orange Volunteers and the Red Hand Defenders, have carried out about 20 similar bomb attacks on Catholic homes, pubs and churches in recent months.
The Red Hand Defenders is the smaller group. It is made up of dissident UDA, UVF and LVF members and understood to be active in Belfast - particularly north Belfast - and Antrim.
"The Red Hand Defenders are heavily influenced by Protestant fundamentalism," says a loyalist source. "They want to wage a Protestant jihad." But it is poorly armed. "They have been trying to obtain weapons but mostly unsuccessfully because they are regarded as too unstable."
The Orange Volunteers are considered a greater long-term threat. Most of their membership has no previous paramilitary involvement. Loyalist sources say the group recruited heavily from the ranks of the Orange Order, attracting young militants who had joined because of Drumcree.
"They are quite well armed," says one source, who expects sectarian attacks on Catholics to continue to rise. "They have weapons which were imported from South Africa by the Ulster Resistance in the 1980s. Some training has been provided by former members of the security forces."
Six weeks ago, Mary Quinn was dozing on her living-room sofa in her Dungannon home, her four children asleep upstairs, when something came crashing through her kitchen window at 1 a.m.
"I thought it was an iron bar and somebody outside was acting the blackguard. I hadn't a clue what a bomb looked like. I was stunned when the RUC told me it was a bomb. Thank God it didn't explode.
"We have lived here 13 years. There is no reason why anybody would bomb us. Our children attend a religiously mixed school. We have no interest in politics or anything like that. I've become very jumpy. If I hear even a noise at night, I'm frightened."
Eleven days ago, Margaret - which is not her real name - was getting her children ready for school in her home in Rosapenna Street, on the peaceline in north Belfast, when she noticed a strange object in her back garden.
"It was like a pipe with big bolts on it and what looked like a candlewick with red candle grease at one end." It was a pipe bomb, thrown over the peace wall from the loyalist Manor Street area.
The back of the houses in Rosapenna Street are right on the peaceline. Margaret has five children under nine.
"I'm worried sick," she says. "I won't let the kids play in the garden. I won't use the kitchen after dark. The back bedrooms are out of bounds. All five children sleep with me at the front now. You can't take any chances."