There was a boy called Timi who had always liked growing things.
When he was three years old, he’d buried his wellington boot under three 5pillows and watered it every day until his mum found it.
It hadn’t grown into anything. But that didn’t put him off.
When he was a little bit older, he collected seeds from apples and grew them in old yoghurt pots on his windowsill. He took a piece of mint from the school garden and let it sit in a glass of water where it grew white root tendrils that looked like hair. He planted it in a patch of soil at the bottom of his block where it grew strong. It came back every year.
His mum would always know where to find him whenever he disappeared off. He’d be in his bedroom, at his windowsill. ‘The little garden,’ Mum called it.
The ‘little garden’ was getting bigger. Timi’s class had grown bean plants in 6school, although not everyone had wanted to take one home. But Timi had found a space for them amongst the apple seedlings.
Mum’s tummy looked like an apple these days. It was round and hard and domed but sometimes it would move.
‘There’s the baby,’ Mum would say when Timi would spot the little movements in her tummy.
Timi imagined the baby to be like one of his seedlings. Starting so very tiny but over time, a root would push its way out of the seed, a little leaf would uncoil. And then another and another and the stalk would grow strong and green, up and up.
It was almost impossible to believe that the tall bean plant in front of him had started off as just a shiny, speckled seed that he could hold in the palm of his hand. 7
And it was almost as impossible to believe that there really was a baby in his Mum’s tummy.