The house leans one point four degrees to the west. Veda knows, because she measures everything: the sugar bowl that walks across the table, the twenty seconds a steel bearing takes to roll the length of the hall, the weight of every step on the ceiling above her bed.

Then her husband takes in a lodger.

Sylvan makes no sound and leaves no trace on any surface. He is there to assess her. Garrick has forged Veda's signature on a charge against the house, and to cover it he needs her declared unable to manage her own affairs. The certificate is already typed. Only the date is blank. And on the back of a delivery sheet, Garrick has drawn a room with the locks on the outside.

But Veda keeps records too. In a house that leans, she knows exactly which way things will fall.

A literary psychological thriller about coercive control, forged papers and a woman who measures everything. A novella of about 20,000 words. Book One of The Plumb Line.