"She wouldn't have cared about the present but you had to get a nice card. She hated garage cards. She always wanted something with a soppy verse, to show you loved her. Lisa was so soft and sentimental," says her sister Joanne.
Lisa Dorrian, 15 weeks missing and presumed murdered by the Loyalist Volunteer Force, would have celebrated her 26th birthday today (Sunday) with her family in Conlig, Co Down.
She would have opened her presents: money from her parents; perfume, cosmetics, and the chunky silver jewellery she adored, from Joanne, 22, and her other sisters – Michelle, 21, and Ciara, 8.
"Then, Lisa and Michelle and I would have spent the afternoon getting ready for a big night out," says Joanne. Instead, the sisters will devote the day to making emblems to be worn as part of the campaign to find Lisa's body.
Seamus McKendry, whose mother-in-law Jean McConville was one of the IRA disappeared, calls with a spool of blue ribbon for the symbols. "Seamus wrote to us after Lisa went missing, offering help" explains Joanne.
"At first, we didn't want to know. We weren't ungrateful – we just wouldn't think of Lisa as one of 'the Disappeared'."
"Seamus's family waited 31 years for the return of Jean's body. I don't know how we'd cope waiting even 31 months for Lisa," says Patricia Dorrian, her mother.
Lisa Dorrian was reportedly last seen alive around 5 a.m. on 28 February after a party at Ballyhalbert caravan park. The LVF have denied murdering her. Nobody believes them. The alleged killers' names are well known in loyalist circles.
Now all that is left of Lisa sits in the Dorrians' front room: two suitcases of belongings collected from the rented house she shared with a friend.
Patricia can't bear to open them. But she smiles as her surviving daughters banter about Lisa's dress sense. "The stuff in there would make us cringe," jokes Michelle. "Lisa had some awful taste – like thigh-high silver boots."
"She was always saying I dressed like a receptionist even when I was going out," says Joanne. "She liked really bright colours and anything with sequences. She loved to be noticed.
"She had an accident five years ago on a shop escalator. It tore huge lumps from her legs. She had numerous skin grafts. It was a shame because she always had great legs. She had to cover them up on the beach but she still looked gorgeous.
"She lived for holidays. When I was 16, she took me away twice – to Fuerteventura in February, and Tunisia in March. She was so spontaneous and generous. She paid for everything. I hadn't a hope in hell with the men. They were queuing up for her. But I was never jealous because she was so loving."
The sisters shower you with photographs of Lisa – in a black and silver sparkly top at Joanne's house-warming; laughing in fancy dress; in a hospital bed after the escalator accident.
Even then, stripped of all make-up and in a blue hospital gown, she looks gorgeous. A man's arm sits around her shoulders. "That's Jamie," says Joanne. "He was lovely. They went out for four years. They were mad about each other.
"They split up at Christmas. We thought they'd get back together but then Lisa met this other guy. We didn't approve. She fell in with a bad crowd. One had 'scum' scrawled on his car bonnet.
"She always took drugs at the weekend, but she began taking speed and ecstasy very regularly. She was in awe of her new boyfriend. It was unhealthy. She was with him 24 hours a day. She gave up her job in the sandwich shop. She was naïve. She trusted everybody."
That's unsurprising given her upbringing. Lisa's mother's family were from Dublin but moved to England. Patricia grew up in Oldham. When she married John Dorrian, a driving instructor, she moved back to Ireland. They chose Conlig.
"It offered a good quality life," says Patricia. "The houses weren't expensive, the schools were better than in England, and the Co Down coast was beautiful. There were beaches down the road for the children. I always thought it safe."
The Dorrians were Catholic but never experienced sectarianism in predominantly Protestant Conlig. "None of us were politically aware," says Joanne. "Some of Lisa's new crowd were LVF but she wouldn't have understood the danger.
"We knew nothing about paramilitaries, except the IRA was Catholic." Lisa flitted from one job to another. She worked in a solicitor's office; several department stores; and the civil-service.
"She got bored easily," says Joanne. "She was runner-up in the cut-and-blow-dry section for Northern Ireland trainee hairdresser of the year, but she left that too. She was interviewed to be an air hostess – "her hair all pinned up and with bright red lipstick and nails like a real floozy," says Joanne.
"When she worked in the sandwich shop, Joanne and I called in on Saturdays," says Michelle. "She insisted I try a banana sandwich – it was horrible. She made Joanne Santa sandwiches – turkey and cranberry sauce."
Lisa was expecting £50,000 compensation from her escalator accident. She had big plans for a jet-ski business in Spain. "Nothing concrete was arranged. Yet, typical Lisa, she had already invited us over as if it was sorted," says Joanne.
The details of Lisa's final hours remain confused. Ten people were at the caravan party. But the others left, and only Lisa and a teenager, a friend of her boyfriend's, reportedly remained. The teenager says they'd been taking drugs for hours. They went outside after "hearing noises" and Lisa "got lost".
There are reports Lisa had angered some of her new friends by "stealing" speed the previous day and running up a huge drugs' bill. The young men suspected of her killing are linked to a prominent LVF drug-dealing family in East Belfast.
Lisa's mobile phone, which had been missing, was subsequently found in East Belfast. Joanne believes the truth might emerge from the women in Lisa's new crowd. Patricia doesn't: "I grew up near the Moors when Myra Hindley was abducting children. I've no faith in women who can be even more evil than men."
Despite a huge Police Service of Northern Ireland investigation involving sniffer dogs, air and sea search crews, divers, and 150 officers, no body has been found.
Among the items etectives have seized are a caravan, a trailer, and nine cars. Three men arrested and questioned were released without charge. Yet PSNI sources remain confident of bringing Lisa's murderers to justice and of finding her body.
"We're happy with the investigation but we'd like things moving more quickly," says Patricia. Loyalist sources opposed to the LVF are more suspicious. They allege the police know exactly what happened to Lisa, and where she is buried, but aren't acting on the information because at least one of the killers is an informer.
Patricia thinks her daughter lies in Belfast's Black Mountain or Cavehill, or a forest. The Dorrians aren't wealthy but they've scraped together a £10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of Lisa's body.
They're planning a billboard campaign. They've raised £3,700 so far for that but need more money. They still haven't a clue politically. They want Southern politicians to involved. Yet, apart from Bertie Ahern, they don't know anybody else to contact.
When a local DUP representative visited, Patricia confused him with the PUP, the UVF's political wing. Local UUP MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon, has been great, Patricia says: "I was upset when she rang on Monday. 'Put on the kettle, I'll be round in 10 minutes!', she said. She sits in the kitchen and listens."
Lady Sylvia bought the Dorrian girls diamond-studded silver crosses which they treasure. Patricia can't face bringing her youngest daughter Ciara to school: "All the mothers would ask about Lisa. People mean well but it's hard when strangers approach you.
"I went shopping for a swim-suit for Ciara. This woman gripped me by the arm and said, 'the people of Newtownards are praying for you'. I wondered what the people of Newtownards were doing praying for me whom they've never met."
Patricia stresses how hard they tried to get Lisa off drugs. Joanne doesn't want her sister portrayed as "indecent". She takes out a box where Lisa kept mementoes: cinema and concert tickets from special evenings; holiday plane tickets; and dozens of cards from her family and Jamie.
There are photographs of sunsets on beaches where she and Jamie walked their dogs; and of lofty old trees she'd admired.
"Lisa had a drugs' problem but she wasn't just some sort of immoral party girl," says Joanne. "She was romantic, affectionate, and a wonderful sister and daughter. She shouldn't be lying in some unmarked grave. We want to bring her home."
