Free The Spoiler by Annalena McAfee

about the only really interesting aspects of her life—the famous love affairs? The Hollywood parties? Her privileged childhood should provide some anecdotes, too. Dusty details about her work could be woven in from the cuttings later. This method, Tamara knew, often threw naive interviewees off guard: taken aback by the interviewer’s boldness, even rudeness, they would overcompensate with a politeness that had the same result as a truth serum. The more blunt and ill-mannered the question, the more frank and self-damning the answer. But Honor Tait was a cunning old pro, and not overburdened with courtesy. She would show Tamara the door within the first minute.
    As if to prove the point, the old woman replied with a viperish smile: “All of it? Really? The highest praise.”
    “I’m your greatest admirer,” Tamara said.
    Honor’s smile shrank to a fleeting wince.
    “I’ll be the judge of that.”
    “No, honestly. I’m your biggest fan. I’ve been following your career and reading your work forever.”
    “Really! How old are you exactly?”
    “Twenty-seven.”
    “You were born in 1970?”
    Tamara nodded cautiously.
    “Let’s see,” Honor said. “I was covering the aftermath of the Kent State killings in Ohio that year. I suppose, between nappy changes, you were following my reports on the anti–Vietnam War movement? Reading me in your cradle, were you? Cheering me on with your rattle?”
    Tamara’s cheeks reddened, with suppressed rage rather than embarrassment. Was the old woman trying to provoke her? This was simple antagonism.
    “No. No. I mean I read your work when I was at Poly. They’re set texts in Media Studies.”
    “I always thought that was a contradiction in terms: Media. Studies …”
    Tamara’s throat tightened, and she coughed nervously. The old woman was psychotically irritable. How long had they been sitting here? She had not yet managed to ask a single question. But how to begin? Tait would clearly not be seduced easily into conversation. Especiallyby a woman. If Tamara had been an attractive young male reporter, or even a louche middle-aged toff like Simon, she might have been in with a chance. Best to play it straight.
    “I wonder, what was the most memorable story you ever covered?”
    Honor gave her a crooked smile. She knew she was being perversely obstructive, but the girl was such a little dunderhead, and so cheerfully dishonest, it was irresistible.
    “Memorable? I like to think that they were all worth committing to memory.”
    “Well, you know … historic. Your Pulitzer Prize, for instance. That must have been amazing, winning something like that in your twenties.”
    “Considering the subject, what I’d seen, the prize seemed ridiculously unimportant. A frivolity.”
    “Yes, of course.”
    Tamara nodded, trying to remember the subject of the award-winning piece. She wished she’d had time to read it. Was it Korea? Vietnam?
    “But I suppose,” Honor continued, picking at a loose thread near the hem of her dress, “if it meant that more people read the article than might otherwise have done, it was worthwhile. And now it’s been reprinted, so you’ve read it too, and a new generation can learn lessons from the mistakes of the old.”
    “Yes. Right … But, apart from that, I mean, what were the biggest historic events you covered?”
    Honor sighed.
    “Nuremberg? Poland? Berlin? Korea? Was that the sort of thing you had in mind?”
    Tamara feared the worst. She had interviewed old people before. While they might forget what they had said five minutes ago, their long-term memories could be horribly intact. The last thing Tamara needed now was a sustained historical soliloquy; a torrent of words and dates without a single usable quote. Her eyes widened, and she nodded again in feigned enthusiasm.
    “Or were you thinking more of Madrid?” Honor asked. “Or Vietnam? The Cultural Revolution?”
    “Madrid … The Vietnamese Cultural Revolution. Great. You