The Spoiler by Annalena McAfee

Author:Annalena McAfee [McAfee, Annalena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-95852-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

She could not work. Nor could she sleep. Insomnia was another curse of age. How cruel that you needed less sleep as you got older, leaving more waking hours to contemplate encroaching oblivion.

Ten

Tamara murmured a polite greeting to Courtney and walked towards her desk. She could not believe it. Tania was sitting there again and had arranged another pile of books on top of Tamara’s back copies of OK! and Hello!.

“Oh, sorry!” Tania said, with a vixen’s smile. “Computer’s down again.”

“Shouldn’t you be doing something about it? Isn’t that your department, computers?”

“Well, no, actually. We’re not technicians. We’re journalists. If you’d like to spend a morning on the Web site to see what we really do, I’d happily show you around.”

“No thanks,” Tamara said airily, reaching for a copy of OK! and upsetting Tania’s stack of books. “I gave up Space Invaders years ago. Strictly for spotty teenagers.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong,” said Tania, whose blemish-free complexion was a radiant rebuttal. “It’s the future. For all of us.”

“That’s what they used to say about unisex silver jumpsuits and time travel.”

Tania laughed, a tinselly chime, and gathered up her books. Tamara looked at the spines: one by Martha Gellhorn—Tamara squirmed at the memory of her recent gaffe with Honor Tait. One by John Pilger, the Australian yachtsman, and a history of World War Two. Didn’t she ever relax?

Seated at her reclaimed desk, Tamara drew out her notebook from her bag. There were captions to be written—Tod Maloney and Pernilla Perssen, the Swedish supermodel–turned–lingerie-designer, had been pictured squint eyed outside a West End nightclub—and she still had to finish this week’s A-List: “Skinny Minnies and Manorexics.”

First, though, she needed to write up her notes from Honor Tait’s salon. Then she would put in another call to Uncumber Press. Discretion was essential. Courtney and Jim were conspiring in a corner again.

Paul Tucker, macho newsman, a cut-price Robert Redford, has returned with news from some far-flung battlefront. Honor Tait sits in the centre of the room like Queen Guinevere, surrounded by her knights of the realm. Jason Kelly, fresh from his blockbuster screen triumph in Faraway Tree, adorns the evening with his smouldering presence. Ruth Lavenham, publisher and bustling Mrs. Tiggywinkle, knocks up some canapés in the kitchen. A small German with hyperthyroidic eyes (fill in name later) …

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