A lovestruck boyfriend was planning to propose to his girlfriend before he tragically died in a flat fire.

Grieving Kerry Stark has revealed how her partner of five months, Terry Davies, 24, was going to ask for her hand in marriage on her birthday in November.

Speaking to The Argus yesterday, Miss Stark said: “He was so excited – he found it hard to keep it a secret.”

Mr Davies died in the early hours of Thursday morning when a blaze broke out at his seafront home in Littlehampton.

Firefighters were called to South Terrace at around 12.45am to find a fire raging in the front hall of the three-storey building.

When firefighters broke in, they found the body of Mr Davies in his third floor flat at the rear of the house where he lived alone.

Mr Davies, a former pupil at the Palatine School in Worthing, worked as a cashier at the new Morrisons supermarket in Littlehampton.

Miss Stark, 19, said: “Both of us started working at Morrisons at the same time and we worked together for three months before we started talking on Facebook, where he asked me out on a date.

“We never had an argument and he always said how much trust we had in each other.

“Everything he did, he did with me in mind. He never wanted to upset me.

“If you had met him he would have made you at ease straight away. There
wasn’t a bad bone in his body. I just wish I had met him sooner.”

Miss Stark recalled a trip to the Isle of Wight with Mr Davies in June as one of her fondest memories of him.

She added: “We did an overnight stay. We went all over the island. It was nice just to spend the time with him.”

Also paying tribute yesterday, Terry’s mother Mitzi Price, 46, described her son as “jolly and happy- go-lucky”.

She added: “He had learning difficulties but he never let that get him down. His passion was to learn to drive. He had trouble with the theory test and had to do it four times, but he wouldn’t give up. He passed his practical first time.

“He lived for his car and wasted petrol driving everywhere, but he loved it. He had a little Peugeot, then a little Citroen Saxo.”

She added: “It was my fifteenth wedding anniversary on the day he died and we had a tap at the door at about 6.45am, but I ignored it thinking it was a family member bringing an anniversary card round.

“My husband Nick, Terry’s step-dad, went down and when I heard him say ‘come in’ I realised it was the police. This has left a huge hole in our lives.”

A spokeswoman for West Sussex Fire and Rescue said the cause of the fire was believed to be accidental, and revealed investigators were examining a fuse box in the hallway.