Laura Hoff, an only child, is a reclusive young woman who lives with her mother in a working-class home in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. She is known as LV (short for Little Voice) for her reticence. She flees reality, hiding away in her bedroom, listening to records and mimicking their artists' voices like Gracie Fields', Judy Garland's, and Shirley Bassey's; her love of songs is her only source of strength since her beloved father's death. Her mother Mari, a promiscuous woman with countless affairs, jilts a man when her passion wanes.