The killer entered through the back door. It was never locked. He often visited the house. This time he wore a balaclava. He crept upstairs to the bedroom. He saw the couple sleeping. He knew them both well. They were all friends.
He did not want to harm the man. He pointed the gun at the young woman. She did not waken. He put six bullets in her. The blood seeped on to the sheets.
Sentencing Trevor McKeown this week to life imprisonment for the murder of Bernadette Martin (18) two years ago, Lord Justice McCollum said it was "a despicable crime".
McKeown (37) had used information gained through his friendship with his victim and her boyfriend, Gordon Green (19), to carry out the killing. As he was being sentenced, he yelled abuse and claimed he had been framed.
Bernadette smiles cheekily from the photograph in the shamrock picture-frame her mother treasures. Margaret Martin says her daughter was full of fun, always laughing and carrying on. She was a typical teenager, crazy about music and fashion.
She grew up in the mainly Catholic town of Lurgan, Co Armagh. Protestant Portadown, home to the Drumcree parade, was only a few miles away. But Bernadette knew nothing about politics.
She never harmed anyone in her life. When she was 15 she began carrying a card requesting that her organs be used to help others in the event of her death.
Not that she was thinking of dying. She left school the following year and got a job at Avondale Foods in Lurgan where she met Gordon Green. They got talking at a Christmas party. They could not be separated after that.
"She loved him and he loved her," said one of her friends. "He treated her like gold." They were going out together for seven months when Bernadette was killed.
Gordon was a Protestant. He lived in the staunchly loyalist village of Aghalee, a few miles outside Lurgan. Neither family said they minded the religious difference.
Yet it was a volatile situation. Gordon had been questioned by detectives after the sectarian murder of a Catholic taxi-driver, Michael McGoldrick, in 1996. He was released without charge.
He had been a member of a loyalist band but left when he met Bernadette. His friends said he was called "Popehead" for going out with her, although Gordon denied this in court.
The month before her death, Bernadette was assaulted at the shops. Her friends said she received sectarian abuse which intensified as the marching season began.
A friend of Gordon's said he had told him he and Bernadette would have to split up "or something would happen." Gordon could not remember this either.
Surprisingly Bernadette, her family and the Greens all seemed unaware of the risks of her regularly visiting Aghalee.
A young Catholic, Robert Hamill, had been kicked to death by loyalists in neighbouring Portadown a few months earlier. On July 14th, 1997, tensions were high. The Drumcree parade had just passed down the Garvaghy Road after nationalist opposition.
After work that day Gordon and Bernadette went to her house and discussed plans for her 19th birthday party in September.
They bought a bottle of wine and drank it at a nearby lake. Gordon's mother picked them up later and they drove to Aghalee. They often spent nights at each other's houses.
They went for a drink first in the Lock Keeper's Inn, near Gordon's home on the Soldierstown Road. On the way, they saw two of Gordon's friends, Paul Camlin and Noel Best jnr, waving an Ulster and a Union flag.
In court Paul Camlin said Gordon had shouted, "Up the Provos!" Gordon said he had drunk a lot and could not remember.
Meanwhile Trevor McKeown, who had attended an Orange parade in Lurgan with Gordon's parents, was getting drunk. He met Gordon's sister, Lynn, in a pub in the town and told her he was going to get the gun that shot Mr McGoldrick and shoot himself.
When McKeown returned to his home in Coronation Gardens, just round the corner from Gordon's house, Paul Camlin and Noel Best jnr were there. The latter told him about Gordon's "Up the Provos" and McKeown replied: "I'm going to get him."
McKeown's defence argued in court that Best jnr and Camlin were the real killers, but that Best had done a deal with the police. However, Lord Justice McCollum found that McKeown was the murderer.
A .22 Spanish Star pistol was uncovered five days later in a field. It was the gun that had killed Michael McGoldrick.
McKeown was arrested by police eight hours after Bernadette's shooting. He was in the bath. Some clothes were steeping in a bucket and the washing machine was also on. Among those items was a black ski mask. McKeown said he wore it hunting.
Gordon told the court that McKeown had always been friendly to him and Bernadette, and never made sectarian remarks. They had stayed overnight at his house a fortnight earlier.
The Loyalist Volunteer Force denied it was responsible for the killing. However, McKeown went on to the LVF wing in the Maze prison.
He was later moved to a secure wing in Maghaberry jail for his own protection. There had long been suspicions in loyalist circles that he was an RUC informer. Sources say he joined the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade in the 1980s.
In 1981 McKeown's brother, Clifford, turned supergrass, but later retracted his evidence. According to sources, Trevor McKeown was sidelined by loyalists until the 1990s.
He became active again in the UVF and, when it split in 1996, aligned himself with Billy Wright's LVF. Trevor McKeown was friendly with the Greens but many who know him say he had a reputation for violence.
One said: "He hated all Taigs. He was a mental case. Everybody knew that. After a few drinks he was game for anything. All somebody had to do was give him the information and point him in the right direction and he would do the rest."
The full details of the murder may never be known. It was an awful deed yet, by Northern Ireland standards, unsurprising.
