World-renowned war artist Dame Laura Knight is commissioned to paint propaganda portraits of factory girls and is sent to the ordnance factories in her hometown of Nottingham. At first she relishes the opportunity, but when she starts work on a portrait of two particular women, Violet Smith, and her co-worker Zelah Fitzlord, memories begin to resurface that she has spent half a lifetime trying to forget. Violet is an industrial conscript, and her wages help a family back home in Kent. For Zelah, too, working in the gun factory is an escape: her dreams of the future were dashed in the Plymouth Blitz. But all three have something hidden ...