‘Jojo! You’re home! It’s Clara and Jojo night!’

Jo pulled her little sister into a tight hug. ‘Yes, it is! Will we pick a book to read together, or would you like to choose?’

Clara stood and scrunched her face up as if she was thinking, when Jo knew full well what book her sister would choose. It would be the same one she wanted read to every single night, even though she knew the words by heart and could recite it from memory.

‘How about…’ Clara said, eyes wide with excitement. ‘How about Guess How Much I Love You?’

‘Absolutely, little brown hair!’ Jo nodded. ‘And how about we have hot chocolate before bed too?’

‘With marshmallows?’ Clara asked.

‘Of course with marshmallows! You can’t have hot chocolate with no marshmallows. You just have to promise to brush your teeth with extra care afterwards,’ Jo replied.

‘Oh! Jojo! I have a wobbly tooth. See!’ Clara opened her mouth extra wide and pushed at one of her front teeth with her tongue. There was the smallest of wiggles and Jo had to concede that she might just be on her way to losing her first tooth. That thought made Jo feel more than a little wobbly herself. However, she managed to bite back her emotion.

‘Well, that is super exciting. And it means you have to brush your teeth extra, extra well, because the tooth fairy doesn’t take dirty teeth.’

The look of horror on Clara’s face at the thought of the tooth fairy assessing the cleanliness of her teeth was enough to make Jo laugh.

‘Don’t worry, Clara! I know you do a great job of looking after your teeth. I’m sure you will be absolutely fine. Now, why don’t you go and watch some Peppa while I clean up?’

Clara didn’t need asking twice and she skipped off to the living room to watch some illicit TV before bed.

Jo, meanwhile, stood up and started to wash up her dinner dishes, interrupted a short time later by the sound of her mum coming into the kitchen.

‘I heard about the wobbly tooth,’ she told her mum. ‘She’s so excited. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to get so excited about a part of your body falling out again?’

‘God forbid,’ her mother said, making the sign of the cross. ‘I’ll be happy with no more bits falling off or out for the rest of my life – unless it’s a couple of inches off my waist. Have you seen my crochet bag?’