In the first of our exclusive extracts from Annalena McAfee’s new novel The Spoiler, we meet veteran war correspondent Honor Tait (b. 1917). One of the most renowned journalists of her era, Honor Tait is haunted by her past.

Chapter 1

London, 17 January 1997

She had two hours to conceal the secrets of her life. Evidence of
vanity, foolishness and worse must be expunged. Domestic disorder
was not a concern; the maid had remedied that this morning. And
though Honor Tait might have been a slattern by inclination, she was
never a collector, of people or of things. Divorce, bereavement, a house
fire, a stringently unsentimental nature and the protocols of regular
travel had ensured that, for a woman of her years, the flotsam was
minimal. She had always travelled light. In love, as in life, it was hand
baggage only. So what was left here in the London apartment? Which
piece of junk, what accidental survivor of time’s winnowing, would
betray her?

Breathless and gripped by uncharacteristic panic, she glanced around
the room at the furniture, pictures and bookshelves. It was mostly Tad’s,
of course. It had been his bachelor apartment and then it became their
married pied-à-terre. Now it was her widow’s cell. He had been the
homemaker, after a fashion. He had bought paintings, framed photographs,
chosen curtains, indulged a whim for Staffordshire figurines
and Sèvres china, taken a strange delight in the pair of soiled wingback
chairs he had found in an Edinburgh antique shop, and spent
silent hours, like a medieval monk at his manuscripts, poring over
cumbrous books of fabric samples. Even at the companionable peak of
their marriage, they both regarded Glenbuidhe, 700 miles north, with
its invigorating discomforts, as her home and Maida Vale as his. Just
as Honor had taken little interest in dressing the flat, she had no urge
to dismantle it – to strike the set, as he would have said – once Tad
had gone. Now she would be called to account for the acquisitive spirit
and questionable taste of her dead husband.

Read an interview with Annalena McAfee here: