A couple destined to walk through life together, their adventure sundered at the very outset

HER wedding day HER wedding day smile was a flower opening to summer sun, a blossom of pristine happiness familiar to those who had seen the then Michaela Harte run to embrace her famous father on an historic All-Ireland final Sunday.was a flower opening to summer sun, a blossom of pristine happiness familiar to those who had seen the then Michaela Harte run to embrace her famous father on an historic All-Ireland final Sunday.

- - BY ROY CURTIS

A portrait of vitality and contentment, one aflutter with anticipation, an infectious beam that seemed to illuminate the boulevard of possibility stretching out to a distant horizon before a bright, radiant, Tyrone 27-year-old.

Yet, less than a fortnight after gliding down the aisle on a cushion of euphoric air, a mere handful of days after assuming the surname of her husband, John, Michaela McAreavey's corpse lay in a refrigerated Indian Ocean island mortuary.

Murdered on her honeymoon.

Mauritius was the dreamy, picture-postcard setting Michaela and John chose to celebrate their union.

Beloved of newly weds, a paradise where the sunsets are hypnotic; the lapping seas, turquoise; the beaches of such a golden hue that the consensus opinion is some divinity must have subcontracted their construction to Midas himself.

When the delirious couple boarded the long haul flight in the first days of January 2011, any notion that the hourglass of the former Rose of Tralee contestant's life was already down to its final grains would have seemed absurd.

Look again at those arresting wedding pictures The photogenic daughter of multiple All-Ireland winner, Mickey Harte, is in the prime of life, as athletically robust as any of her county's footballers who had lifted Sam Maguire just over two years previously.

At her shoulder, two sides of the same coin, there is something of a song in the way John pours all the love fizzing inside him into an adoring expression.

Yet that flight beyond Africa's eastern extremes would propel the Harte and McAreavey families into the orbit of a vast emotional black hole, one that would devour all the upbeat sentiments that had swirled like so much joyous confetti around the couple's marriage banquet.

On January 11th, after an idyllic lunch with John overlooking the ocean, Michaela had returned to her hotel room to collect a packet of biscuits to enjoy with a post-meal cuppa.