THE FIANCÉE of one of the Shoreham Airshow disaster victims has described her torment of having to prove he was the father of their children.

Speaking exclusively to The Argus almost one year on, the partner of Mark Trussler has told how she had to prove her daughters' connection to him because they were not married.

Giovanna Chirico had been in a relationship with Mark for 13 years, engaged for four years and they had three daughters together.

Ms Chirico, 33, also has a son, Luke, from a previous relationship who Mark "loved as his own".

Mark has two oldest daughters from a previous relationship, Samantha and Kaitlin, and Mark's estate will be inherited by his eldest.

Ms Chirico said she was having to DNA test their daughters Mia, 11, Sophia, four, and Alicia, three, to prove their relationship.

She said: "After nearly 13 years of being together I had no rights and that hurt but I had to accept that."

The window cleaner from Worthing was one of the eleven men killed when the Hawker Hunter crashed onto the A27 in August last year when he took his motorbike for a ride to see the Vulcan flight perform.

Ms Chirico told how she had to bury Mark, who was 54 when he died, twice - after crash investigators gave her the devastating news that further body parts had been identified as his.

She said that finally completing his gravestone had helped her to gain some closure.

The headstone bears one of Mark's favourite expressions "be lucky" and a picture of his beloved motorbike.

She said: "When I was told I owned the grave I knew at that moment that it would be the last thing I could ever do for Mark so it had to be perfect.

"People say with time it gets easier, but it doesn't.

"I'm here on my own with four kids.

"When I saw the grave I had a total meltdown.

"I had not really cried, but seeing it suddenly hit me. It took my breath away

"I knew Mark would have been blown away.

"If you were going out and put a dress on he would be blunt and say if it looked awful.

"But I know in my head and my heart I've done him proud."

FAMILY STRUGGLES TO COPE WITH LOSS OF FATHER

GOD’S very own window cleaner is raining down soapsuds on his children from heaven.

That’s the beautiful image Giovanna Chirico has painted for her young children to understand losing their devoted father, Mark Trussler, 54, who was killed in the Shoreham Airshow disaster last August.

Speaking to The Argus ahead of the anniversary, Giovanna, of Worthing, said: “Mark was absolutely amazing. I couldn’t have asked for a better dad for my daughters. Anything they needed he would get it.”

“He was my agony aunt, my best friend. He was my everything.”

In her last conversation with her partner of 13 years Giovanna said she “had the hump with him”.

He had got a new part for his motorbike and wanted to go out with it.

“When he left I had the hump with him, then I felt a bit bad so I phoned him up and said I’d heard the Hawker Hunter was flying over at 2pm. He said he knew I would crack and that he was at the garage just before the bridge.

“He said he was going to go along the A27, pull up on the roadside, and to get the kids ready because he’d be back at 2.30pm or 3pm to take us out.

“I remember hearing on the news there had been a crash at the Shoreham Airshow and my first thought was to call Mark and see if he saw anything. I never ever thought I’d be told he was gone.”

There followed days of waiting for news of whether Mark was one of those killed in the disaster. On the Friday Giovanna found out that Mark had been identified among the 11 men.

She said that before the police family liaison officer had even got to the kitchen table to break the news to her he had tears in his eyes.

“I just fell to the floor like a sack and cried like a baby,” she said.

Then Giovanna had the unenviable job of telling her children Luke 13, Mia, 11, Sophia, four and Alicia, three.

“I got down to their level and was sitting on the floor with the girls and had to say to them ‘you know how we saw the fire on the TV and the plane crashing, well mummy has been told that when the plane was crashing it accidentally knocked daddy off his bike and he bumped his head.

“And daddy now has been asked by God to live in the sky with him because God said he needed the best window cleaner in the world.

“Daddy is up in the sky doing the windows. When you look at the stars at night and they are big and bright that’s daddy. And when it’s raining that’s because daddy’s dropped his bucket, the ‘silly billy’. And when you can’t see daddy it’s because he’s gone right up his ladder to do the really big windows.”

When Sophia and Alicia saw it snowing a few months later and the girls asked “what’s daddy doing now?” Giovanna quickly explained “he must have put too many bubbles in the bucket”.

Despite the comforting stories for Mark’s younger children – he also had two older daughters Samantha and Kaitlin from a previous relationship – they have all been struggling to cope with his loss.

Giovanna said she doesn’t know whether their lives will ever get back to normal.

“When they told me Mark’s bike had been identified in the debris I just thought ‘stuff like this doesn’t happen to me. It happens to other people’.”

In September the couple would have been together 13 years. They had been engaged since 2011.

Almost as soon as they met, Giovanna said she knew Mark was the man for her – despite a 23-year age gap.

“I 100 per cent knew I was going to get him.”

Giovanna was pregnant with Luke when they met, but she told how Mark had always loved her son as his own.

“Mark was always a happy go lucky bloke,” she said. “He was always smiling and trying to make everyone else smile.”