The Nurse Under the Stairs

Rosa McCabe has been a district nurse for nine years and she has never met a patient as still as Mr. Aldworth. Paralysed from the neck down, unable to speak, he communicates with a blink — once for yes, twice for no. On her fourth night in the flat, Rosa opens a cupboard that should hold linen. Inside is a chair facing a mattress. A child's baby monitor. A wire that runs up through the ceiling. The monitor is on. It is carrying the sound of the hallway Rosa walked through a minute ago. Somebody has been listening to her since the day she arrived. And the man she has been feeding, turning and bathing may not be as helpless as he seems. A twisting, claustrophobic thriller about care, control and the person who lives under the stairs.