Laura Hoff, an only child, is a reclusive young woman who lives with her mother, Mari, in a working-class home in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England. She is known as LV (short for Little Voice) because of her soft, shy, and childlike speaking voice. She flees reality, hiding away in her bedroom, listening to records and impersonating the voices of American and British artists such as Marilyn Monroe, Gracie Fields, Judy Garland, and Shirley Bassey; her love of songs is her only source of strength since her beloved father's death. Her mother, a promiscuous woman with countless affairs, dumps a man when her passion wanes.