Scene One. A middle-aged journalist named Ian, and Cate, a young woman half his age, enter an expensive hotel room in Leeds. Ian is a bigot and manipulates Cate into doing what he wants, while Cate is fragile and seemingly simple-minded. Throughout, Ian’s primary goal is to seduce Cate, but she resists him at every turn. They go through various routines, with Ian drinking excessively, ordering food to the room, and loading and reloading a revolver he has brought with him for protection. Every once in awhile, Cate passes out. Ian’s incessant smoking has already cost him a lung and he sees little point in getting a transplant. When the phone rings, Ian reads to the person on the other end a story about a girl from Leeds who became a victim of a serial killer while traveling in New Zealand. After Cate rejects his advances once more, Ian places her hand on his penis while he masturbates. She tells him that they can’t have sex because she’s not his girlfriend anymore, now that she’s Shaun’s girlfriend. The conversation freewheels along from sex to football (soccer) to bombing to shooting guns to happiness and draws to a close with the sound of rain.
Scene Two. The same hotel room, the next morning. While Cate sleeps, Ian drinks and reads the newspaper. Cate finally wakes up at the sound of Ian grabbing his side in pain and coughing. Then the pain begins to spread across his entire body and he collapses. Cate wakes up, and Ian recovers from his episode. While he is in the bathroom cleaning up and launching into another coughing fit, Cate rips the sleeves off his jacket. When he comes back into the room and sees what she’s done, they get into a physical scuffle that ends with both of them on the bed and his gun in Cate’s hand pointed at his groin. Before things get really out of control, she has another one of her fainting spells and only comes around after Ian has rubbed himself sexually against her body. After she faints yet again, their conversation moves from breakfast to leaving to Ian’s secrets about his work as a journalist, and his paranoia. Then Cate starts to perform oral sex on him as his rate of speaking slows to a drawl. On the word “killer” he starts to come and Cate bites him hard on his penis. When they return to the topic of his service, he claims he loves his country, but she insists that there's no good excuse for killing people. They both react intensely when there is a knock at the door. Cate pleads with him not to answer it, but the knocking continues incessantly. When Cate goes to take a bath, Ian finally opens the door and is met by a soldier holding a sniper rifle. The soldier takes Ian’s gun from him and then proceeds to demand that Ian hand over his breakfast. As he eats, the soldier discovers Cate’s panties and rubs them against his skin before slipping them into his pocket. The sound of water running sends the soldier to the bathroom, but Cate has escaped through the window. The scene ends with the blinding flash from an explosion.
Scene Three. The hotel now features an enormous hole in its wall caused by the mortar bomb. The soldier lies unconscious, his rifle still firmly grasped in his hands. When the Soldier awakens, he and Ian have a conversation in which Ian tells him that he is Welsh. The two men trade stories of war and women and sex and torture. Ian tells the soldier that he is a home journalist for Yorkshire now. After threatening to shoot Ian if he doesn’t turn over so he can rape him, the Soldier suddenly kisses Ian tenderly on the lips. Then, pointing the gun at Ian's head, the Soldier rapes him, crying all the while. When he is done, he shoves the gun up Ian’s rectum. After the soldier confesses to more horrific acts of atrocity, he sucks out both of Ian's eyes.
Scene Four. The scene opens with the soldier dead, having shot himself in the head. A drenched Cate comes through the bathroom door carrying a baby. She describes the city outside the hotel as a place of chaos and fear under the control of the soldiers. Cate grabs the gun from the soldier’s hand and takes out the bullets. Ian demands she hand over the gun so he can shoot himself; he does not want to face life as a blind person. He puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger, but it's empty. Cate looks down and sees the baby is dead and starts laughing uncontrollably.
Scene Five. Cate is burying the dead baby under the floorboards of the hotel room. Cate starts to head out and Ian asks her where she’s going. She tells him she’s hungry and wants food. After she goes, a montage of mostly silent scenes interrupted by a light flickering on and off shows Ian masturbating, going to the bathroom, strangling himself, laughing, crying and having a nightmare. At one point he hugs the corpse of the soldier in a desperate bid for comfort and in his hunger finally resorts to digging up the dead baby and eating it. Then he dies. Then it starts raining, and he’s speaking when Cate comes back with a sausage sandwich. She feeds Ian and gives him gin to drink. The rain starts up and Ian thanks her.
