The Devil's Music (2009)

Jane Rusbridge's novel, first published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury in 2009, begins in the late 1950s, when five-year-old Andy has a new baby sister, Elaine, whom his father calls "not quite all there". His rope-maker grandfather teaches him knots and tells him stories of Harry Houdini, and Andy dreams of becoming an escapologist. Three decades later, after his father's death, Andrew returns to The Siding, the old railway carriage that was the family's seaside retreat. (Open Library)

Watches

Timex (unidentified model): Andy, narrating his own childhood chapters, has a new Timex wristwatch and consults it constantly: there is time to see Grampy on the way home from school with his sister Susie, and then ten more minutes before Mummy will start to worry (pp. 103 to 104). Practising Houdini's underwater escapes, he bolts the bathroom door, puts the Timex on the edge of the bath and unties knots under water while holding his breath. It says a quarter to four on Pancake Day when he and Hugh, with handcuffs hidden in the coal cellar, decide that today would be a good day to do it (p. 185). The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: I push the bolt on the bathroom door across and put my new Timex on the edge of the bath. (Jane Rusbridge, The Devil's Music, scan cataloged as Bloomsbury, 2009, p. 105; Internet Archive scan OCR)