The family’s second disaster occurred in August, when Thomas was injured at work. A heavy industrial component shifted during a maintenance operation, trapping his lower body and causing serious injuries that required surgery and prolonged rehabilitation. Leo remembered the telephone call more clearly than the days that followed. A supervisor from the factory had asked whether there was an adult at home. Leo said his father was working and his mother was dead. The man went quiet, then explained that Thomas had been taken to hospital and that someone would come to look after the children. For the next several weeks, social workers, hospital staff, neighbours, and distant relatives moved through the family’s life. Thomas survived, but he could not return home quickly. He required further medical treatment and rehabilitation, and his ability to resume physical work remained uncertain. A temporary care arrangement was established for Leo and Lily with help from their father’s sister, who lived outside London, and a neighbour named Mrs Bell. It was never as simple as two children being entirely alone in an apartment, but the support was inconsistent and spread among adults with their own obligations. The aunt worked shifts, Mrs Bell had arthritis, and the available family support did not always match the moments when Lily needed someone.
Lily had a chronic respiratory condition that made ordinary winter infections more dangerous for her than for many children. She had been hospitalised several times when she was younger and required prescribed treatment and regular medical review. Thomas had always been particularly careful about following her care plan, knowing which changes in her breathing required prompt medical advice and ensuring that medical equipment supplied by her clinicians was maintained appropriately. After his accident, those responsibilities became another source of fear for Leo. The equipment Lily sometimes needed was not something a child could safely construct from household parts, and he knew that doctors and nurses were responsible for determining her treatment. Yet he had grown up watching his father repair machinery, and when an accessory or a nonclinical household item broke, his instinct was to examine it. He began drawing devices he hoped might make Lily’s life easier: a quieter fan for her bedroom, a stand that would keep her books within reach when she was unwell, a storage box that organised her care supplies, and a small mechanical alarm that could remind an adult when a scheduled check was due. In his notebook, he gave these projects grand titles. One page described a “breathing helper,” although the device was no more than an unfinished model of a mechanical reminder system. He did not understand how easily an adult might misunderstand the drawing.
Money became another worry, though not in the simple way Leo imagined. The children’s essential medical treatment was available through the NHS, but the family still faced mounting practical costs, delays in sorting out household finances, and uncertainty over Thomas’s employment. Their father’s wages had stopped, the factory’s insurer was investigating the accident, and formal financial arrangements were still being reviewed. Mrs Bell helped with shopping when she could, and the aunt contributed money, but Leo heard adults discussing electricity, transport, heating, and overdue payments more often than they realised. Sometimes a letter arrived that no one opened immediately. Sometimes the landlord’s representative called about repairs. Leo listened to every conversation and drew conclusions that frightened him. He believed that if enough things broke, the family would lose the flat. He believed Lily’s condition would worsen if he failed to keep everything working. He believed his father’s return depended partly on how well he managed the household in the meantime. Nobody had asked him to take on that responsibility. The adults around him assumed he understood that he was still a child. Leo assumed they would not say that if they knew how many problems remained unsolved.
His secret work began with a clock belonging to Mrs Bell. It was an old wooden mantel clock that had stopped chiming years earlier. Thomas had promised to examine it, but the accident happened before he could begin. One afternoon, Leo asked whether he might try to identify what was wrong. Mrs Bell was hesitant, yet she remembered Thomas allowing the boy to help with harmless projects under supervision. She agreed that he could look at it while she remained nearby, provided he did nothing dangerous and stopped if he was uncertain. Leo spent several evenings studying the mechanism and comparing it with his father’s old repair notes. With help from a retired clockmaker who lived two streets away, he managed to restore part of its operation. Mrs Bell was delighted. She gave him five pounds, which he initially refused. She insisted that he keep it for a treat. Leo used the money to buy fruit for Lily and a small notebook from a discount shop. The experience changed something in him. For the first time since his father’s accident, he had been able to improve a situation that frightened him. He began visiting the retired clockmaker, MMrFinch, after school, asking questions and watching him work on simple mechanical objects. Finch recognised the boy’s unusual curiosity, but he did not realise that Leo was spending more and more of his evenings studying because he believed becoming a better repairer could somehow solve the family’s difficulties.
By October, Leo had developed a habit that his teachers found increasingly irritating. He carried the blue notebook everywhere, filling its pages with sketches of mechanical assemblies, measurements, questions, and rough diagrams. Some related to old clocks. Others concerned household repairs or the small projects he wanted to complete for Lily. He often drew during lessons because an idea would occur to him and he was afraid of forgetting it. More troublingly, he had begun staying awake long after bedtime, reading his father’s repair manuals by a small lamp or examining harmless discarded components at the kitchen table. Mrs Bell and the aunt repeatedly told him to sleep, but neither knew how frequently he woke afterwards to resume his work. Sometimes he lay awake simply listening for Lily coughing in the next room. He worried about her breathing even on nights when she was well. The fear had become so familiar that silence could trouble him as much as noise. By morning, he was often exhausted. The marks on his hands came partly from ordinary childhood scrapes and partly from his attempts to handle small mechanical pieces without the supervision his father had once provided. His clothes were untidy because he dressed in a hurry, sometimes after falling asleep over the notebook and waking too late to prepare properly.
