Families share snippets of short, bright lives as a town mourns its darkest day

A RED rally jacket and a black riding hat. A red rose and a school photograph.

Memories of lives led and lost, laid out in the cold corners of St Patrick's Church, Fermoy, Co Cork, where mourners huddled to pay last respects to two young students.

If the wind outside was bitter, the words inside were not. The father of 19-year-old Clíona Magner, who discovered the bodies of his daughter and her former boyfriend Wayne Roche at a house in Bishopstown, Cork city, last Friday night, spoke only of the overwhelming support his family had received in the wake of their tragic loss. His remaining young children, daughter Bronagh, 14, and son Darragh, 10, listened, distraught.