There was a very red-faced man who looked like he might pop at any moment. He was wearing a yellow fluorescent vest and had a thick furry moustache. It reminded Timi of one of the caterpillars that he might find munching upon a leaf. It quivered as he shouted.
98‘Get them out of here,’ he was yelling to some other workmen. Behind the bustle, Timi also spotted that there were people who were not part of the demolition team.
‘Abi!’ cried a woman, who had a giant bun and colourful scarf tying it up. She was crying a little bit and ran towards Abi.
Timi wasn’t sure if she was angry or cross by the tone of her voice, but as soon as she reached Abi, she flung her arms around her in a tight hug.
Then Timi realised that everyone else’s parents were there too. They scooped up Mo and Marcus and Roberta and the others, so fixed on 99them that they didn’t seem to notice the huge tree that loomed over them all.
And then, through the din, a cry cut through that Timi knew instantly in his bones. It was a tiny little bleating wail. Bisi was there, in the arms of his mum who was looking at him with her eyes glazed with tears.
‘Timi, what’s going on?’ she asked him.
‘It’s the tree,’ Timi said.
He turned towards it, wondering, once again, if it might disappear now that there were more people there to see it.
‘The tree?’ his mum repeated. ‘The tree!’
Her voice filled with wonder and, when he looked at her again, she was still crying but the tears looked different. They weren’t sad tears; they’d changed to look like they were tears of amazement. 100
‘Timi, what’s happened here?’ she asked.
The other parents were staring up at the tree now too.
‘It just … grew,’ Timi answered her.
He could hear the other children’s voices bubbling up all around him.
‘Timi’s been looking after it,’ he heard Marcus say. ‘That’s when it started.’
‘We reckon it’s the fastest growing tree in the world,’ Mo said.
‘Now we all look after it,’ said Abi.
Abi’s mum placed a hand against the trunk of the tree, just as Timi had done, and the other children when they had first seen it.
‘How could this have happened?’ she said very quietly. She turned towards the other parents. ‘This wasn’t here when we closed the library three months ago.’ 101
There was another explosion of voices. Timi couldn’t hear what they were all saying, but everyone seemed to be disagreeing with each other.
One voice rose over the others. The man in the vest, with the moustache.
‘It doesn’t matter – we are carrying on, regardless. We’ll call someone in to get this chopped down in no time and then the work will continue.’
‘No,’ shouted Timi. His voice came from somewhere deep inside of him. It was loud and strong and made everyone stop talking. ‘You can’t chop the tree down. We won’t let you.’
He looked towards the other children and they all began to climb the branches, scrambling up quickly as if they were a troop of monkeys and had lived among 102the treetops their whole lives.
103Timi was the last to climb up and he turned towards where his mum was standing, with Bisi.
‘You too,’ he said. ‘Bisi – she needs to be up here too.’
His mum hesitated for a moment, but then she passed Bisi carefully to Timi where he sat on the branch. It had been a while since he had held her and he was surprised to notice that she had grown much more than he’d realised in the last few weeks. Her eyes were open and they gazed into the canopy of leaves above her.
‘All this,’ Timi whispered to her. ‘This is for you too.’
Bisi locked eyes with Timi. Her mouth twitched and then settled into a smile: her very first smile. 104
105‘She likes it,’ Timi said to the others.
Abi called for her brothers and sister who scrambled out of reach of their parents and started to climb the tree too. Marcus helped his little brother up and Mo’s older sisters came over too and suddenly the tree was full of more people than Timi had ever seen.
‘Everyone,’ Timi said and looked towards the parents who seemed unsure of where to stand and what to do. Some of them had taken a few steps back when the man with the moustache had started shouting, but others looked longingly towards the tree and the children.
Timi’s mum looked at Timi. ‘Did you 106really look after this tree?’ she said.
Timi shrugged. It hadn’t felt like looking after. That seemed too much like work, something you felt you had to do. Coming to see the tree and watering it was more like something Timi couldn’t not have done.
‘I just came in to see it and watered it. That’s all I did,’ he said. ‘And then it just grew and grew and grew …’
His mum gazed up towards the branches that were almost resting against the top of the ceiling.
‘It’s … incredible,’ she said. ‘How could this have happened?’
She hooked one of her legs over one of the lower branches and, though the moustached man was really shouting now, she climbed up so she was next to 107Timi and Bisi.
She looked over at them.
‘She’s happy with you,’ his mum said. ‘That’s the most happy I think I’ve ever seen her.’
Timi looked into Bisi’s face and spoke hello to her in his mind. But this time, for the first time, he could feel her answering him back. Hello Timi, he thought she said. Mum sidled a little closer to them on the branch.
‘I know it’s been hard, for all of us, getting used to our new family,’ Mum said. ‘We haven’t spent enough time all together and I haven’t told you enough; how 108much I love you and how much Bisi loves you too.’
‘It’s OK,’ Timi said. ‘I do know that.’ And then he spoke a truth, a truth he hadn’t been able to say aloud: ‘I’ve missed you.’
As he spoke, Bisi’s small hand reached out and planted itself on Timi’s chest. She was answering him back once more: I’ve missed you too.
‘And I’ve missed you,’ Mum said, reaching out to stroke his cheek. ‘And all this time, you’ve been growing this tree. It’s incredible.’
‘We’re trying to protect it,’ Timi said. ‘We’ve been trying to look after it.’
His mum nodded and he knew that she understood.
‘Come on, everyone,’ she called out to 109the other parents. ‘Get up here. Be with us.’
Abi’s mum came next. Then Mo’s dad and mum. Roberta’s dad followed on. And then all of the others rushed to join their children in the tree and, at the very second that the last parent climbed into its branches, a huge creaking sound filled the air.
It roared in Timi’s ears and Bisi looked up, looking for where this giant sound was coming from.
The tree had started to grow right in front of them all.
That was the sound they could hear – it was the sound of growth.
Its branches surged upwards and outwards with such force that they burst through the roof of the building.
Everyone ducked as rubble from the 110hole in the roof fell down, but the leaves of the tree protected anyone from being hit.
Timi looked up, as did everyone, towards the hole in the roof where the new growth of the tree had split it open.
Light streamed into the room from the hole and Timi could see the blue of the sky through it. 111
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