One year ago today Damien Trainor and Philip Allen were chatting over soft drinks in the Railway Bar in Poyntzpass. They were talking about Philip's wedding, planned for last summer. Damien was to be best man.
Their friendship was strong and deep, forged over a passionate love of cars. Philip had happily waited for six months to obtain a new Toyota Celica. He maintained it in pristine shape. "Philly kept his car in that good a condition that he would buy a car and sell it two years later for more than he paid for it," his mother, Ethel, recalled.
Damien's mother, Ann, had told Philip: "You'll never get married because you care too much for that car" - "and," she said, "he just smiled at me."
Philip (34) and his fiancee, Carol Magill, were to set up home in Banbridge. Philip and Damien (26) reckoned matrimony wouldn't interfere with their hobby. "When you get married I will just have to go and live with you at the weekends," Damien joked to his friend.
That was the nature of their discussion in the Railway Bar at about 9 o'clock that night: marriage and motors. That was the time that masked gunmen, suspected members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, burst into the pub. They ordered the few patrons to lie on the floor and then, according to the barmaid, Bernadette Canavan, "started shooting all around them".
Philip Allen died almost instantly. A priest and a nurse at the scene told Ann Trainor that her son should survive. "But I felt how cold he was, I knew he wouldn't." A short time afterwards Damien too died from his injuries.
Tonight, the Trainor and Allen families will join Catholic and Protestant neighbours for a special memorial Mass in the little Catholic church in Poyntzpass. Afterwards they'll cross the road to the Trainor home for sandwiches, sausage rolls and tea.
Ann Trainor and her husband, Sean, and their son, James, will join Cecil Allen and his children, Hilary, Alfred, Jeffrey and David, in remembering Damien and Philip. Carol Magill also plans to be there. Ethel Allen will be there if her health allows: yesterday she was suffering from laryngitis.
The mothers of Philip and Damien say their families and Carol Magill are still in a state of aching sorrow and shock. Listening to and observing Ethel and Ann you can witness the sorrow and the shock as a weight that is real and terrible.
One year on and it doesn't get any easier - in fact it gets worse. For the Protestant Allen and the Catholic Trainor families in this snug little village located among the rolling hills of Co Armagh the pain of grief is still cutting deep. There's mutual support and solidarity, but while this is a consolation, it doesn't ease the burden.
There was positive political fallout from the terrible deed 12 months ago. David Trimble and Seamus Mallon, during a troubled stage of the talks, stood shoulder to shoulder at the funerals of the two friends, at graveyards in sight of each other in Poyntzpass.
Less than six weeks later on Good Friday the Belfast Agreement was signed. The murder of Protestant and Catholic friends didn't set the seal on the agreement, but there's no doubting that it concentrated minds up at Castle Buildings, Stormont.
It was recognised that those who murdered Damien and Philip were intent on wrecking any hope of an accord, that they wanted to drive a wedge between the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland. The politicians, in a sense, rose to that challenge. Hence the Belfast Agreement.
Ethel Allen and Ann Trainor both voted Yes in the referendum endorsing the agreement. "I wish now I'd voted No," said Ethel. "I can't stand to see the prisoners released early . . . Yes, I suppose there is a degree of relative peace, but how long will it last?"
"I voted Yes, but I will never vote again," said Ann. "I voted Yes for the country, for the old people and the children, but it will do no good, there will never be peace . . . Why should the prisoners be let out? For them to do the same things all over again, and for other families to go through what we are going through."
Ethel says she would like to see her son's killers. "I would just like to ask them, why? No, I could never forgive them. I hear people talk of forgiveness, but I could not forgive them. I hope to see them suffer the way they made us suffer."
The act by its very nature was evil, Ann said. It was also an act of jealousy because, she believes, the killers could not bear to see a Catholic and a Protestant as such good friends. "They singled them out in the bar, I know they did," she said.
Poyntzpass is a village where there are genuine good inter-religious relations. "When I meet people on the street, either Catholic or Protestant, and they ask me how I am, I know they mean it deep in their heart. This is a good town," said Ethel. "People are kind," Ann added.
Both Ethel and Ann said that as each day passes the burden of grief seems to get heavier. Ethel explained: "When you are feeling really down you don't want to let on. Because if somebody is having a good day, and you start talking about Philly or Damien, you just bring them down. And if they are having a bad day and you start talking to them you just make them feel worse."
