11. Poor Jim?

Chapter 11: Poor Jim? follows Norah as she starts work at the Coal Office at the London-Midland-Scotland Railway in Derby in October 1941. Her encounters with men and excitement about her new love affair with Danny are the prominent themes of her diary. Jim, while rejected and dejected, is not prepared to give Norah up without a fight. Until this point, the story reads as a near-conventional love story: Norah has left school and met Danny and is thrilled with the way her new life is unfolding. This chapter marks a first ‘kink’ in the plot, as our sympathy for Jim is brought into question by my revelation of his requests in his letters to Norah for ‘school-girl snaps’. I confess that I have kept this detail from my readers, wanting them to experience Jim as Norah did. The chapter suggests that the ‘love triangle’ between himself, Danny and Norah might not be as straightforward as it seems. But if Jim is up to no good, would Norah, a sexually innocent girl of sixteen, have any inkling as to what might be going on?