December 1957: miner's son Vic Brown meets Ingrid Rothwell, an attractive young typist in the engineering firm where he works as a draftsman, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Vic is infatuated
they begin an intense relationship, and when Ingrid discovers that she is pregnant, the couple marry in haste and move in with Ingrid's mother. But Vic finds that physical desire rapidly fades and the banality of marital life frustrates him as his sense of claustrophobia grows.
