Growing up in the Norfolk countryside, Rosie only wants one thing—her mother’s love. But for reasons she is yet to discover, her popular, bolshy, and brash mother treats her no better than a servant. Like a cat toying with a shrew, she doesn’t miss an opportunity to dig her claws in and ridicule her daughter, taking advantage of her willingness and desperation to please.

When Rosie happens upon a situation that she wishes for all the world she could unsee, she is drawn deeper into the sordid and unsavoury parts of her mother’s secret life. Rosie soon becomes more than just her servant—she becomes her confidant, her accomplice, and her alibi. And having finally achieved what she always dreamed of, Rosie must now decide if the price is really worth paying, as she finds herself teetering on the precipice of a moral conflict that threatens the very fabric of her family life.

After leaving school, she begins to find some meagre crumbs of hope in a new job as a trainee nurse at the local hospital. Her hardworking ethic and resilience, finally garnering recognition from an unlikely source in the shape of the universally feared matron - better known as The Terrier - but even this cannot provide escape from the torments of her home-life.

However, upon reaching her lowest ebb, a new patient arrives in bed no. 9. Falling off the back of his motorbike and into her life, the confident and fast-living Teddy Miller sets his sights firmly on young Rosie. With the gift of the gab and his heart on his sleeve, Teddy always gets what he wants — and Rosie soon finds herself caught in an emotional, manipulative, and sometimes violent tug-of-war, in which it appears there can only ever be one loser.