A bizarre coincidence saw history repeat itself when 18-month-old Chloe Chalk locked her red-faced mum Suzanne out of their house.

For at exactly the same age - almost 21 years ago to the day - Suzanne was guilty of carrying out an identical prank on her own mother.

On both occasions the emergency services had to rush to the rescue while the little girls' stranded mums waited anxiously outside.

Chloe was trapped inside on her own for more than an hour.

But instead of being scared, the mischievous toddler laughed as police struggled to force their way into the house in The Close, Tye Green, near Cressing.

More than two decades earlier Suzanne had also got the giggles as firemen clambered up ladders to free her when she locked her mum Pat out of their third floor flat.

"It's like deja vu because I did the same thing to my mum when I was that age," said Suzanne, who works part-time at Barnes Packaging, in Braintree.

She said Chloe had somehow slipped the bolt on the door while she was outside pegging up the laundry.

"I'd left the door open but when I came back it was locked," said Suzanne, whose mother, Pat Smith, lives just round the corner from her.

"I looked through the window and there was Chloe gazing up at me. When the police came she just sat there laughing. My mum said I'd done exactly the same.

"The only difference is we are on the ground floor so luckily we didn't need the fire brigade."

She added: "It's over 20 years since I locked my mum out. I can only remember what my mum told me about it but she's still got the clippings from the newspaper. She had been hanging the washing out and so was I - it's a real coincidence."

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