‘I love this place so much,’ she said, ‘and it will give me great pleasure to share it with someone else.’ They planned a trip for the end of that week to visit a dolmen and a ring of standing stones about an hour’s drive away. But standing in the middle of the stone circle that Friday afternoon, Nuala wondered why she was so disappointed. Was it the old pattern Kevin had pointed out in her so often: expecting too much from things so that disappointment inevitably followed? Perhaps. She knew that was a fault of hers, and a hard habit to break. But this time she wasn’t even clear what she had expected from this excursion. Anna too, she thought, was responsible to some degree for Nuala’s failure to enjoy the day, for she was in a foul temper. Nuala had never before seen her so tense and irritable. They had gone first to the dolmen. Nuala stood looking blankly at it, as if staring at the stone formation would force it to yield up its secret. ‘How old did you say this was?’ she asked, and was taken aback when Anna snapped, ‘I’ve already told you at least four times.
