Blackpool, 1959. The Singleton family is on holiday. For seven-year-old Beth this means avoiding her mother Ruth's supervision. Her sixteen-year-old sister Helen, meanwhile, has befriended a waitress whose fun-loving ways hint at a life beyond Ruth's strict rules. But Ruth's husband, Jack, a foreman of the local cotton mill, is caught between unions and owners whose cost-cutting measures threaten an entire way of life. When a letter arrives from Crete, a secret re-emerges from the rubble of Jack's wartime past that could destroy his marriage. Over the holiday week, all four Singletons must struggle to find their place in a shifting world.