And Tilda said, from the back, apropos of nothing, somewhere around the roundabout at Ferrinby: “Mummy. Is Auntie Romy allowed to be like that because she’s the little one?”
Six years old.
And I said what did she mean by like that.
And she said: “She does things and everyone says it’s a joke.”
She had it. At six, from the back of a car, with no information at all, she had the entire architecture of my family in one sentence — because she is the little one in this house, and she has been paying close attention to what the little one is allowed.
That is the reason Casper and Tilda now get told, at their level, when something is not a joke. Out loud, in front of each other, at the time.
It is not a technique. It is me, at thirty-eight, having realised that a six-year-old had already worked out the family rule and was, quite reasonably, checking whether it applied to her.
