ON a small patio in the back garden of a house in the gated community of Howth hill lies a scene marked by tragedy.

It is there that Celine Cawley spent her final moments of a life that otherwise held the trappings of a grand, rewarding adventure. Her life was punctuated by years of international modelling, the establishment of a successful company, a marriage and the birth of a daughter. And then, finally, death in a violent and unexpected finale.

Eamonn Lillis, her husband of 17 years, was convicted of her manslaughter on Friday evening. During the trial, conflicting opinions and stories about Celine Cawley emerged. Some painted a picture of a difficult, confrontational woman. Others remember her as a devoted, fun loving mother who knew her own mind and how to succeed, but never at the expense of others.

Opinions of Celine vary. She was some kind of social recluse, not anti-social but more inclined to be with her family. She was very close to her sister Susanna and her brother Chris. Their other sibling Barbara died from cancer in 1998 and her mother Brenda died two years ago.

Her Bebo webpage declared that she was at her happiest when at home with her daughter, her dog and her husband, in that order.

Cawley was a woman who lived for her 17-year-old daughter and for her business. Her relationship with Lillis is described by those who worked with them as rocky. Although he was not a regular presence at Toytown Films, where she was managing director and he a director, their arguments are recalled as legendary.

While she was the power behind the business, Lillis is described as being an artist and a bit of a dreamer. When he did appear in the office, the tension between the couple was obvious and friends who visited their home said they regularly argued in public.

"She seems to be betrayed as a tough nut and nearly a bully. I think that's unfair. I wouldn't have seen that side of her," an old flame from her modeling days said. "She was very focused and knew her own mind. She was successful in business, but I would never have called her a bully."

Cawley was born into wealth and lived in the up-market suburb of Howth. In her 20s, she flew around the world with a successful modelling career and mingled with the glitterati.

She had a brief relationship with John McEnroe's brother Mark and played a small role in the James Bond film A View to a Kill.

Her parents, James and Brenda, instilled in their four children a drive to succeed.

James Cawley was a close friend and business associate of Tony O'Reilly. The pair were partners in the solicitors' firm, Cawley, Sheerin & Wynne, until they parted company in the 1990s and Cawley was also on the board of O'Reilly's Independent Newspapers. Following her stint in modelling, Celine Cawley established Toytown Films in 1990, beginning what would become the country's largest commercial advertising production company.

It was in the same year that she met Eamonn Lillis at an advertising festival in Kinsale.

"She was saying that she had met him and was mad about him from day one and I remember thinking why is she making so much out of this," recalled a former industry associate.

"I think they definitely were in love; by all accounts it was love at first sight. He was very quiet; I'm not sure that you would ever warm to Eamonn or see Eamonn ever warming to anyone. I can't see people ever having a friendly conversation with him."

Lillis was the only son of Séamus, an army commandant and Margaret, a home economics teacher who are now deceased. He grew up in suburban middle-class Terenure in Dublin with his two sisters, who now live in England. They accompanied him to the trial every day.

After a brief stint in journalism at the College of Commerce, Rathmines, in the 1970s, Lillis went onto art college and worked as a copywriter for the advertising agency DDFH&B.

The couple met in 1990, married the following year and had their only child in 1992. It appears that after that, they slept in separate bedrooms. One source said that Cawley was aware that he was living a double life, but the couple did not want to divorce.

One former employee said that while Cawley could be "good craic", she could also be very demanding and people knew to stay out of her way.

"Celine could be a lovely woman but Jesus when things went wrong you scattered to get out of earshot," he said.

"If she had have been a bloke you wouldn't have batted an eyelid, but I suppose she just had a short fuse. If anything went wrong she would just freak out. She would have given people a bollocking; everyone would know to try and avoid it."

A Howth resident who knows the family concurred: "She didn't smile, she was just very direct. She was friendly but she wasn't someone who would hug people or anything like that. She was very businesslike and very direct. I knew that if I asked her a question I would get an answer, not snapped out, but very straight. She never asked me anything about me."

Others disagreed. "She drove a hard bargain in business, that's true, but she was not the tyrant some people have tried to portray her as," said a female colleague.

Cawley was known for being somewhat short on self-confidence.

According to friends, a hospital procedure she underwent following an accident had caused her to accumulate weight.

Celine was also remembered as a solid maternal figure who cared for her daughter. "She was very protective of her; that was the first thing I saw in her," said one local.