Half of this book takes place when our protagonist May is a young wife and mother and details her life with abusive husband Alain, a gaslighter par excellence.

The other half takes place 40 odd years later when May has a stroke and ends up in a care home, with only her daughter Jenny and a couple of friends for company. She begins to think that her old husband lives across the hallway from her and gets frightened but can't tell anyone because the stroke left her unable to speak.

We know she must have escaped him in the past but we're not sure who this man really is. The twists when they come aren't particularly surprising. For me, it took too long to get there and then ended too abruptly.

However, the tension never leaves, and the author masterfully creates a sense of dread in the first story and a sense of powerlessness in the second, where no one understands May and the care workers even dislike her because they interpret her uncontrollable, jerky movements, sounds and facial expressions wrongly.