by M J Dees
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Details can be found at the end of LIVING WITH SACI
Living with Saci
M J Dees
Published by M J Dees, 2017.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Title Page
Living with Saci
Chapter One - The Dentist – 11th January 2016
Chapter Two - The Fiancé – 12th January 2016
Chapter Three - The Lover – 7th December 2008
Chapter Four - The Fiancé’s Family – 13th January 2016
Chapter Five - The Sister-in-law – 13th January 2016
Chapter Six - The Ex-husband – 20th January 2014
Chapter Seven - The Doctor – 18th January 2016
Chapter Eight - The Psychologist – 19th January 2016
Chapter Nine - The Journal – 19th January 2016
Chapter Ten - Another Dream – 20th January 2016
Chapter Eleven - The Headmistress - 21st January 2015
Chapter Twelve – Carl Dixon - 26th January 2015
Chapter Thirteen - Back to school - 26th January 2015
Chapter Fourteen - The Cat - 1st February 2015
Chapter Fifteen - The Beach - 3rd February 2015
Chapter Sixteen - Unlucky for some - 7th February 2015
Chapter Seventeen - The Car - 9th February 2015
Chapter Eighteen - The Bus - 10th February 2015
Chapter Nineteen - The Doctor - 11th February 2015
Chapter Twenty - The Judge – 7th January 2014
Chapter Twenty-One - The Stalker – 14th February 2015
Chapter Twenty-Two - The Conversion – 15th February 2015
Chapter Twenty-Three - The investigation – 30th January 2016
Chapter Twenty-Four - Back to reality – 16th February 2015
Chapter Twenty-Five - Back to the Beach - 16th February 2015
Chapter Twenty-Six - The First Disagreement - 20th February 2015
Chapter Twenty-Seven - Ways to Die - 22nd February 2015
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Learning to live together - 24th April 2015
Chapter Twenty-Nine - The Family – 2nd May 2015
Chapter Thirty - The in-laws – 9th May 2015
Chapter Thirty-One - Settling into a routine – 18th May 2015
Chapter Thirty-Two - the calm before the storm – 15th October 2015
Chapter Thirty-Three – The wine – 7th January 2016
Chapter Thirty-Four - The Morning After – 8th January 2016
Chapter Thirty-Five - Same old story – 10th January 2016
Chapter Thirty-Six - Another morning after – 11th January 2016
Chapter Thirty-Seven - Life after Felipe – 27th January 2016
Chapter Thirty-Eight - The examination – 28th January 2016
Chapter Thirty-Nine – The Chip Shop – 6th December 2013
Chapter Forty - The Results – 25th February 2016
Chapter Forty-One - The Cuckoo – 26th February 2016
Chapter Forty-Two – Taking control – 29th February 2016
Chapter Forty-Three - The Fight Back – 1st March 2016
Chapter Forty-Four - The cancer treatment – 15th March 2016
Chapter Forty-Five - A visit from Lucretia – 11th April 2016
Chapter Forty-Six - The Detective Returns – 11th April 2016
Chapter Forty-Seven - Felipe returns – 11th April 2016
Chapter Forty-Eight - Teresa returns – 7th October 2016
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY M J DEES
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Living with Saci
Living with Saci is set in the sprawling metropolis of Sao Paulo, Brazil. It tells the story of Teresa da Silva, overweight, depressed, drink dependent, and her struggles in the city, estranged from her daughter who lives with her ex-husband in England. Teresa seems to be constantly dealt a bad hand, and she begins to wonder whether the mischievous character from Brazilian folklore, Saci, might have something to do with it. Events seem to be taking a turn for the positive when she meets Felipe who asks her to marry him, but when he disappears, Teresa finds that she is the object of suspicion.
Chapter One - The Dentist – 11th January 2016
The building was just as she remembered it. A private house originally, the front was now obscured by large beautiful, faces with perfect teeth. Huge bubble letters spelt the words: ‘Teeth U Like.’ Teresa got her breath back from the short walk, then reached up to press the entry phone button. Teresa couldn’t quite decipher the tinny voice which crackled through a small plastic speaker.
“I have an appointment?” She said, unable to hear the reply before the device buzzed at her. She heard a metallic clunk, and the large gate opened an inch. Teresa pushed her way through and, with effort, managed to close the gate behind her.
“Name?” the receptionist asked between smiles.
“Teresa Da Silva. I’m early.”
The receptionist was indifferent to Teresa’s punctuality.
“Take a seat.” she smiled.
Teresa flopped onto the only chair, a large sofa. She slumped down into its brown leather cushions and waited. Her phone vibrated, it was a text from her fiancé, Felipe, telling her he loved her and that he was sorry. She was about to text a reply when she heard her name.
“You can go through.” said the receptionist.
“Through here?” Teresa indicated the only door in the room other than the entrance.
“Yes.” the receptionist sighed.
Teresa opened the door and walked into a white room filled with modern dental equipment. A man in a white medical coat was arranging utensils.
“Good afternoon, you can leave your bag here.” the dentist turned and gesticulated to a chair.
Teresa had forgotten how good looking he was. She realised her phobia of dental work must have been huge to keep her away from that man for five years, but she could tolerate the pain in her jaw no longer. She climbed onto the examination chair.
“OK, let’s have a look,” he said. Teresa imagined him leaning over and kissing him and then reminded herself she was still engaged to be married even if her fiancé was a bastard. The dentist turned away, fiddling with something just outside Teresa’s vision. When he returned, he was wearing a surgical mask.
Teresa opened her mouth to expose her valuable collection of old fillings and complementary decay.
“Hmm.” the dentist mused, peering inside.
Did dentists only date people with perfect teeth? What about bad breath? She tried to stop breathing for a while but couldn’t keep it up for long. She needed to swallow.
A bang and a loud metallic crash from outside, then distant shouting.
“Excuse me.” the charming dentist left to investigate.
Teresa lay still for a moment, her mouth wide open. She closed her stiff jaw.
More shouts. In the next room. A woman’s scream. Shit. What should she do? Teresa sat frozen in the chair until her amygdala allowed her frontal lobes to consider the problem. Before her frontal lobes had made up their minds, a masked man burst through the door and pinned Teresa to the chair, knife in her face.
“Money!” ordered knife man.
Teresa kept her hand in clear view and pointed toward her handbag. Knifeman glanced at the bag and punched Teresa in the face.
Darkness.
Teresa’s face hurt. She smelt burning. Her mouth, arms, and legs would not move. She was on a hard surface. She opened her eyes. She
recognised white floor and white equipment.
Teresa began to remember what had happened. She began to panic. She wriggled and loosened what felt like tape binding her wrists. She twisted and turned, managing to create enough distance between her two large wrists to use her arms to prop herself up. From where was the burning coming? She looked around the room. It must be coming from outside. She listened, holding her breath. Silence. Where were the charming dentist and his receptionist? Where were the robbers? Where was her handbag?
Teresa searched for something to cut the tape. The best she could find was the corner of a Formica cupboard door. Unable to stand up and search on the high surfaces, Teresa backed up to the cabinet and rubbed the tape up and down the Formica corner. She could pull her wrists further apart until the tape snapped and she was free to examine her wrists: red, sore and littered with shreds of tape that ripped the tiny bleached hairs off her arms when she tried to remove them. Leaving the remaining tape and turning her attention to her ankles, Teresa expected Knife Man to burst in at any moment and was desperate to get free and get away. Teresa pulled at the bindings. Unable to tear the tape, she took a deep breath and, despite her heart almost beating itself out of her chest, somehow found the patience to locate the end and unwind it. Free of her bonds Teresa stood, placed her ear against the door. Although she heard nothing, the smell of burning was stronger.
Teresa took a deep breath and eased the door open, wide enough to peer through. She could see something smoking on the sofa. The same sofa she had been waiting on not so long ago. The sofa itself seemed to be smouldering. A charred lump, spread out on it, was smoking. Teresa peered trying to make out its shape then fell back in horror as she realised the piece of smoking remains had hands.
Teresa retched, but nothing came out. She spat a mouthful of bile and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. What to do? She looked around the examination room for a phone. There wasn’t one. She looked for an exit. None. Not even a window. The way out was through the reception past the smoking corpse. She took another deep breath, walked to the door and pushed it open. There it was. She opened the door wide and looked around. No-one. No-one except the burnt remains on the sofa of the dentist or receptionist, she assumed. Teresa tried to give the corpse a wide berth, but, due to an overwhelming curiosity she could not control, she turned and looked. Looked at the two white round eyes staring back at her in desperation.
Darkness.
Chapter Two - The Fiancé – 12th January 2016
What is your health plan?” the nurse asked.
“Banco São Paulo,” Teresa answered.
The nurse frowned.
“We don’t work with them,” she said, handing Teresa another piece of paper.
“What’s this?” Teresa asked.
“Your invoice,” the nurse gesticulated to a cupboard in the corner. “Your clothes,” she said, turning on her heels and leaving before Teresa could form any thoughts into sentences.
She looked at the paper. Jesus! What did they do to her? How long had she been in the hospital? They hadn’t fixed her teeth. Her jaw ached worse than it ever had. She examined the paper, but none of it made sense except the large number at the bottom. All the savings she had put aside to see her daughter would be swallowed up by this.
Teresa opened the cupboard and discovered her clothes in a neat pile on the bottom shelf. She got dressed as quickly as she could and, leaving the room, found herself in a long white hospital corridor, opposite the nurses’ station.
“Excuse me,” she said to the woman behind the counter who seemed engrossed in paperwork.
“Excuse me.” She repeated.
“Just a minute.” The woman did not look up from her sea of forms.
Teresa waited. She shifted, coughed. She looked around. The woman looked up.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I think there’s been some mistake,” Teresa said, showing the woman the piece of paper. “I’m not sure how long I’ve been here but…”
“No mistake.” the woman interrupted after the briefest of glances at the sheet.
“But it seems rather a lot.” Teresa protested.
“You’ll have to speak to your health plan for a reimbursement.”
“Do you know how long I’ve been here? Did the police bring me here?” Teresa asked.
“I just got on.” the woman answered, burying her head in her papers again, suggesting the conversation was over.
Teresa looked around and headed for the exit. Felipe, her fiancé, must be worried sick by now. She hadn’t spoken to him since their argument, and she hadn’t replied to his text before going to see the dentist. She also wanted to ask him if he knew anything about Oliver, her missing cat. She thought she heard the nurse shouting something after her but she just ignored her and headed for the exit, having to squeeze past a couple of police officers who wanted to use the automatic sliding doors at the same time as her.
She left the hospital car park and stepped out into the bright daylight of São Bernardo do Campo.
São Bernardo do Campo was much like any other satellite city of São Paulo. Grey concrete, broken tarmac, a tangle of black wires overhead strung from decaying concrete lampposts. Half-finished buildings rising out of every hill, their fragile brick facades shrouded with veils like virgins on their wedding days. Teresa knew that the veils were to stop the bits falling off the buildings from killing anyone on the dirty streets below and if anything, Teresa thought the streets of São Bernardo do Campo were a little bit filthier than most. Summer was well underway now, and the cockroaches were venturing out of the drains to escape the heat and feast on the detritus strewn around.
She had no money, no cards, no phone, no idea of anyone’s phone number and seeing as though the hospital hadn’t mentioned that she was too ill to attempt to walk the 5km back to her house, she set off. In fact, the hospital had said nothing about her condition. They didn’t seem too worried. They had offered her the use of their phone, but Teresa didn’t know any phone numbers. When she was younger, before mobile phones, she could remember at least a few: her parents’ home phone, their work phones, her work phone, her home phone, her boyfriend’s home and work phone (when she had one, which was not often). Now the only number she could remember was her own.
So what to do? She couldn’t call anyone. She couldn’t pay for a bus or a taxi to get home. Then she remembered. Biometrics. She could use a cashpoint without her card just by using her fingerprint. Brilliant. Now all she had to do was find a bank. She looked up and down the street, recognised where she was and started walking towards where she knew the city centre was.
She felt a drop of water bounce off her cheek. She looked up at the grey sky, and another droplet landed in her eye. She looked at the pavement as she walked and watched the light grey concrete become light and dark grey polka-dot with the dots becoming more plentiful. Bugger, she thought, recalling the moment she disposed of the latest broken umbrella in a street bin. Oh well. São Paulo needed the rain after months of drought and getting a little bit wet was by no means the worst thing that had happened to her recently.
The rain wasn’t heavy enough to soak her. Just sufficient to make her feel damp as the droplets soaked into her blouse and gave the material the feeling of a wet dishcloth.
By the time she reached the bank, she was more than damp and was conscious that she was dripping on the polished tile floor. To reach the cash machines during the day, she had first to negotiate a revolving door that was, in reality, a metal detector which would refuse to turn at the slightest hint of guns, bombs, knives, keys, coins or mobile phones. She would need to empty the contents of her pockets into a small perspex tray built into the door designed to shield benign metal objects from the metal detecting door while making them visible to the security guard. Usually, Teresa carried so much metal that it was easier to deposit her handbag in one of the lockers at the bank’s entrance. Today, she had had most of her metal objects stolen, so she just needed to drop her keys i
nto the perspex tray and, pushing at the door, she found it moved without objection.
At the cash machine, instead of inserting her card, Teresa touched the screen and, when prompted, placed her right index digit on the fingerprint reader. Happy with her identity, the machine asked what service Teresa would like it to perform. She asked for a modest amount of money so as not to venture too much further towards her already embarrassing overdraft limit. She heard the machine counting the notes. Teresa grabbed the cash and stuffed it into her pocket.
At least she hadn’t lost her keys too, she thought as she reached home, fumbling for the one which unlocked the padlock on the gate. She twisted the key in the lock and shut the gate behind her, opened the door leading straight into the kitchen, taking care lest her remaining cat escape.
There was no sign of Felipe anywhere, and it was just when she returned to the kitchen that she noticed the folded piece of paper on the small metal kitchen table. She picked it up and read Felipe’s handwriting.
I have gone to end it all. I think you will be happier without me.
Teresa slumped onto a kitchen chair. She knew that things had been bad but not this bad. At first, it seemed like some sick joke. Teresa tried to find her address book to get the number for her brother’s wife. She was a police officer. She would know what to do. Teresa preferred to speak to Selma than call Felipe’s family.
As Teresa waited for Selma to arrive, she fed the remaining, now ravenous, cat, Ramsey. There was still no sight of Oliver, but as she searched the flat, opening every cupboard in case the moggy had trapped itself somewhere, she found Felipe’s phone.
Teresa found herself opening Felipe’s messages and looking at the messages he’d sent her just before his disappearance, and in the past hours and day right up to the last SMS he’d sent her telling her he loved her just before she was called in to see the dentist. Scanning through them in reverse order was a bizarre rewind from desperation, anger, despair, recriminations, doubt, paranoia, entreaties, irritation, worry, questions and at first declarations of love.
Teresa began to panic. The police would want to see his phone. What if they saw all these messages? They would question her involvement in his disappearance. Especially considering the content of some of the messages. Could this jeopardise her position at the school? What should she do? She couldn’t risk anything that might lead to her losing her job. But what could she do? She couldn’t delete all the messages, could she? The police were bound to be even more suspicious if there was no evidence of her boyfriend having texted her. Perhaps she could delete some of the worst messages. She tried not to look at his note on the table at the other side of the kitchen. Teresa could feel him staring at her from wherever he was. She went through his texts and deleted the most incriminating. What else?
