The Year I Went Pear-Shaped by Tamara Pitelen Page B

candles were lit and the incense was burning.
    It was three in the afternoon on a hot summers day but the woman had the curtains pulled tight. She sat in the middle of the room working beneath the light of a study lamp, angled so that it shone brightly right down on her hands. The work she was doing was thrown onto the walls around her as shadows of monstrous, bizarre puppets.
    The woman was concerned about having plenty of light in order to see properly while she was cutting. She didn't want to accidentally cut off his fingers but she did want to make sure she completely cut out all trace of the pretty redheaded girl he was holding hands with. It was a tricky manoeuvre but she was well practised at it, as a glance around the room would attest to. Every wall and even the ceiling were covered in photos of this man. She'd obviously been collecting photos of him for a long time as the images, which had been plastered over virtually every flat surface in the room, showed him with a variety of different haircuts, and wearing fashions that dated back a decade. In the oldest photos he looked to be aged in his early twenties, a stunningly handsome young man with a shy smile and a hint of alarm in his eyes. Somewhere in the intervening years, the nervous young man had disappeared and in his place was a confident, self-assured man. With no signs of any lingering shyness or alarm, he smiled straight into the camera lens, raising a hand in friendly greeting to the photographer.
    When she'd finished cutting the picture out, the girl kissed the image of the man then carefully glued it to thick card, before spraying it with a protective varnish.
    As she looked around for somewhere to put it up, a high-pitched scream from outside made her jump. It was followed immediately by more screaming and a child yelling hysterically for his mother.
    Smiling, the woman glanced at the razor sharp knife sitting on the carpet by her side. Simon had obviously found Saffron, she thought.
     

Chapter 13: Rebirth of the Bean Bag
    I glanced at the clock above Mandy's head. 4pm. If I was going to get home, meet Anita, get changed, trowel on enough make-up to sink a battleship, all in time to meet up with Gordon for 8pm, then I needed to get the hell outta the office pronto.
    "Anyway," continued Mands. 'so, I had to tell Derek for the second time that it was over. Can you believe that he turned up outside my window last night with a bunch of roses and a packet of Arnott’s Mint Slices? I mean, does he really think a few flowers and biscuits from the 7/11 are going to make up for having caught him out a second time? After he’d sworn to me that he’d never go near that bloody queen again. How can I ever trust him after that? The sight of him lying naked on our sofa -- the very sofa that we bought at IKEA when we first moved in together -- with his dick in the mouth of that fat, bald queen from next door will be etched on my memory for ever. Never mind that I had to give a perfectly good sofa to the Salvos because there was no way I was gonna seat my arse on it ever again."
    Mands paused for breath and absentmindedly stuck her hands down the front of her low cut, tight, white t-shirt to adjust the position of her breasts. As she did, Tim, one of the guys from the post room came in with the mail and, at the sight of Anita's hand down her top, fiddling with her boobs, fell over a fake plant and badly sprained his ankle.
    Mands was oblivious to the chaos she'd unleashed and blissfully unaware of the fact that she'd just single-handedly (or single-breastedly) ruined the Parramatta Pandas’ chances of winning the final that weekend against the Newcastle Knights by injuring Tim, their star player. It had been the first time in 37 years that the Pandas had made it through to the final. Thousands of dollars had been placed in bets and, come Saturday, an army of men would be crying in their beer. All because of one momentary jiggle of Mand's boobs. If a butterfly in