Their love was the most precious thing between them. The love between Gordon Green and his girlfriend, Bernadette Martin, was rare in Northern Ireland: he is a Protestant, she was a Roman Catholic. Almost a year ago, at one of the few places where both sides in the North can come together, Gordon and Bernadette met at their workplace - Avondale Foods, a food processing factory in Lurgan, Co Armagh.

Although they worked in different sections, they bumped into each other in the canteen and, according to friends, quickly fell in love.

Bernadette (18), was a beautiful girl who could have had her pick of men. According to friends, young men were constantly asking her out but it was Gordon she loved.

Gordon (19), "treated her like gold", say friends. "They were inseparable. He was mad about her. If you saw one you saw the other. You would have thought they were joined at the hip."

It was as if they were oblivious to their religious differences. Though there were rising tensions in the North coming up to the marching season and Drumcree, and despite warnings from friends, they continued to meet.

A regular place the couple visited was the Cellar bar in Lurgan, an establishment which welcomes both communities. They were usually seen playing pool together. Gordon was popular with Bernadette's Catholic male friends as well as the girls.

"I'm a Celtic fan and Gordon supports Rangers. We used to keep each other going about it," said one of Bernadette's friends. Behind the Cellar is the Alley Nite-Club, which both sides of the community frequent. It is just yards from where two RUC officers were killed just over a month ago.

Aghalee, north of Lurgan, where Gordon is from, is a pretty village which is still decorated with the red, white and blue bunting from last week's July 12th demonstration. An Orange triumphal arch is at the entrance to the village.

The vast majority of homes fly a Union Jack, although there is no bunting or flags outside the Green household. Indeed, Gordon's father, Mr John Green, is highly respected by both sides of the community in Aghalee and in the nearby Catholic village of Aghagallon, where he has many friends.

He welcomed Bernadette into his home and treated her like a daughter. His own daughter, Wendy, and Bernadette, were like sisters, said John.

ON Monday night, Bernadette and Gordon were at her home in Pinebank, Craigavon, a mixed housing development a mile outside Lurgan. Gordon's mother travelled from Aghalee to Pinebank to collect them - a five-mile drive.

They had planned to go to work together the next morning. The pair decided to go to the local bar, the Lock-keeper's Inn, in Aghalee. It is a pleasant bar, recently renovated in an old-fashioned style and is close to the disused Lagan Canal which runs into Lough Neagh.

It has a strong policy on politics, as a sign on the wall dictates: "No political discussions. No party songs, please. Thank you."

According to the owner, the pair visited two or three times a week. He remembered speaking to them as he was checking the windows near closing time. "She was a lovely young girl. She was very quiet and just fitted in with the rest."

The couple returned to Gordon's home after 11 p.m. and were in an upstairs bedroom when Wendy returned home from a night-out.

She made the couple tea and toast and the trio chatted and talked until the early hours when, one by one, they fell asleep, fully clothed, on top of the beds, Bernadette and Gordon on one bed and Wendy on another.

The family always left the backdoor open for people coming home. Aghalee has always been regarded as a safe village to live in.

At around 3.30 a.m. on Tuesday, at least one gunman entered through the backdoor, climbed the stairs, went into the bedroom and shot Bernadette four times in the head.

Gordon's father, John, said: "I was asleep in the next bedroom and I didn't hear a bang. When I realised what was happening, I could hardly believe it.

"They must have been waiting. It was done out of pure hatred. I hope that no one else has to go through what we are going through. I have no doubt in my own mind that it was sectarian. It's terrible. We will never get over it."

Despite the brutal injuries to her face, Bernadette's family could not bear to close the coffin. They wanted to see their daughter in these last few days they had with her.

Scores of her young friends arrived to pay their last respects - many were only capable of spending a few seconds by her coffin, too shocked and distressed and unable to comprehend the savagery of her death.

Outside the Martin home yesterday morning, the young outnumbered the old as they waited for Bernadette's coffin to be brought from the house. It was a woeful scene as young men and women wept for a popular young girl gunned down in her prime.

At St Anthony's Catholic Church in Craigavon, Father Richard O'Connell said: "Those people who inflict such sorrow on others, who feel that they have the right to invade the privacy of any home and there to act as judge, jury and executors anywhere and at any time, defy the law of God which states categorically: 'Thou shalt not kill.'

"We can only pray that people who take the law into their own hands will see the grave wrong, the awful crime and sin they commit, that they will feel and see how decent people abhor such conduct and that they will repent.

"How can they atone? To destroy and murder a young girl in the prime of life, a girl loved by her parents, her friends and neighbours, to cause sorrow and distress to so many people. How can anyone atone? It seems virtually impossible to atone for such a crime."

It was a bright sunny day at St Colman's graveyard in Lurgan. Green cloth covering a mound of dirt beside a freshly dug grave. The family huddled together, comforting each other, praying with the mourners, weeping uncontrollably. A few threw red roses into the grave.

Bernadette's parents, Laurence and Margaret, clung to each other and cried. Behind two of Bernadette's brothers, Gordon Green stared in disbelief.

It was unfamiliar surroundings from this young Protestant teenager from Aghalee. He did not know many of the prayers but joined in when the mourners said the Lord's Prayer.

As the mourners gradually moved away at the end of the ceremony, Gordon stared as he had stared throughout at a bleak hole in the ground which now held the body of the girl he loved.

The Lurgan Interfriendship Group, a cross-community group which organised a book of condolence for the two RUC men murdered in the Co Armagh town a month ago, is organising another book for Ms Martin.There will also be a Service of Remembrance in Lurgan town centre tomorrow at 3 p.m.Aghalee, where she was murdered, is hosting a cross-community service in the village hall today at 2.30 p.m..Mr Wilson Freeburn, of Interfriendship, said: "To condemn this most recent atrocity is not enough. This murder goes to the heart of the matter with another innocent victim being slaughtered on the altar of bigotry and hatred."Meanwhile, the DUP deputy leader, Mr Peter Robinson, has condemned the murder as a dastardly deed. He said he was sure everyone would accept it was appropriate that the Forum place on record a condemnation of "the bar- baric murder", saying everybody would have shared in "the grief and the shock and the deep sense of loss" the victim's family was feeling.He also extended sympathy to the Protestant family with whom Ms Martin was staying when she was killed.