The Spoiler by Annalena McAfee

Tamara’s laugh, meant to be hearty, sounded panicky. “I just wanted to get some quotes from you that aren’t directly drawn from your book.”
    “So you’d like me to paraphrase my own words?”
    Tamara nodded.
    Honor stared into her cup for a full minute, as if reading her tea leaves, then leaned over to the side table, picked up her book and opened it at random.
    “Chapter Seven. The Hotel Deutscher Hof. Nineteen thirty-eight.”
    She snapped the book shut and gave Tamara a challenging look.
    “Tea with Hitler? How would that suit you?”
    “Great!” Tamara said.
    It would do for starters, she supposed. Hitler was not Sinatra, but he was a celebrity, of sorts. At least everyone had heard of him. She leaned over her notebook and wrote: “Chk chapter seven.”
    Honor sat back in her chair and spoke in a weary monotone.
    “The German army had mobilised in Czechoslovakia, and Hitler was refusing to meet the foreign statesmen who had assembled in Nuremberg. The world’s press were there, too, and suddenly Ribbentrop announced that tea was to be held in Hitler’s honour at 4 p.m. We were all invited.” She paused. “Is that the sort of thing you wanted?”
    Tamara’s eager nod was encouraging, and entirely insincere.
    “I was sharing a table with Unity Mitford and Robert Byron. Unitywas making sheep’s eyes at the Führer, who was sitting next to Lord Brocket on the next table; the two men were chuckling over some joke but Hitler kept looking across at Unity, seeking her out.” Honor’s voice gradually became more animated; by naming these long-dead phantoms she was calling them, and herself, to life. “I went over to his table with her,” she continued, “and when Brocket got up, presumably to smoke a cigar outside—Hitler abhorred smoking—I slipped in beside him …”
    Apart from Hitler, Byron was the only name Tamara recognised, and poets, living or dead, were of no interest. Occupying her time until Honor Tait said something useful, Tamara continued to redraft her story.
    I’m ten minutes late, which, as any Londoner will tell you, given the state of traffic in the capital, amounts to being early. But Honor Tait, doyenne of British journalism and
vieille terrible
of Maida Vale, is not happy. “What time do you call this?” she snarls, as she grudgingly admits me to her cluttered flat, filled with decaying mementoes of her glamorous youth
.
    Was the girl actually getting this down? Honor wondered.
    “But of course you’ve read all this already,” she said.
    Tamara looked up, startled.
    “In the book,” Honor added tartly.
    “Yes. Yes. Of course.”
    Tamara needed to deflect the old woman’s scrutiny with another question.
    “And what did you have?” she asked.
    “Have?”
    “For tea. Cake? Sandwiches?”
    Honor’s lip curled in tremulous disbelief, then she closed her eyes and gripped the arms of her chair.
    “Let’s see … Unity had, if I remember rightly, scones with cream and raspberry jam. No. It was plum. She couldn’t abide the pips. And Hitler had Sacher torte, chocolate and marzipan, two slices, but he declined the
crème anglaise
 …”
    She was nodding now—her involuntary tremor had taken hold—and she opened her eyes to see Tamara conscientiously taking notes.
    “Oh for goodness’ sake!” Honor said. “Of course I don’t remember. This was a moment of historic importance. Europe was on the brink ofwar. Everyone, except the Nazis, was hoping desperately to avert it. The last thing on anyone’s mind was tea.”
    Tamara sat up, rigid.
    “Yes. Absolutely. Your interview with Hitler …”
    “You
have
read this?”
    The girl’s face was as expressionless as a doll’s. She did seem very stupid indeed.
    “Of
course
,” Tamara said with unpersuasive emphasis. She shifted in her chair. There seemed to be an orthopaedic cushion at her back, grubby and pink as an old Elastoplast. There was something faintly insanitary about the elderly. She felt a surge of