um suggested that we get on with doing some planning right that instant.

‘We should start with a guest list,’ she said, getting up and around in the drawer which is supposed to have useful things like pens and paper in, but which actually has things like old rolls of finished Sellotape, broken hair grips and weird crumb stuff of a dubious and questionable nature (which could be pencil shavings or could be something much worse, so it’s best not to Go There).

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well I suppose we should invite Nick and some of Nick’s friends from the vet’s and – oh no! She might actually want to have Mr Stingy and Mr Gross from the lawyery place where she works! And there will be those annoying friends of hers from college and—’

‘Summer! Summer!’ Mum was waving her hands in front of my face to get my attention in the sort of way people do when someone is Away With the Fairies, in other words On Another Planet, in other other words, not concentrating on what is actually going on in the real live world.

‘Ye-es?’ I said, stopping my Ranting and Raving for a moment.

‘I think that the whole point of a surprise party is that April is not the one organizing it,’ Mum said carefully, looking at me in a Meaningful way with her eyebrows lowered and her eyes glinting. She waited for her words to sink in.

‘Aha!’ I said, pointing my finger in the air like a scientist who has just discovered the cure for all illness and evil in the world. ‘You mean, we can invite whoever we want? Oh well, in that case I’m going to ask Molly and Frank and—’

‘Stop! Stop!’ Mum cried, laughing and trying to look serious at the same moment. ‘I didn’t mean that: I meant that April will not be in charge, as it’s going to be a surprise. But that doesn’t mean you can go ahead and invite only your friends: it’s still April’s birthday, don’t forget!’

I felt all the fizzle go away for the second time that morning and slumped back into my chair. Much as I missed April, I did not think that I wanted to have a houseful of her boring grown-up friends around the place, balancing a paper plate and a glass and nibbling on one crisp at a time and saying things like, ‘I absolutely think this country is going to the dogs,’ and other stupid phrases. (People actually do say that, you know, and I have never understood it, as the dogs are very obviously not in control of this country whatsoever. If they were, then it would be them taking us out for walks and throwing sticks for us to fetch and we would be forced to eat smelly dog food out of tins while they ate roast beef and sausages.)

I did a big ‘humpfing’ sound to show my complete disapproval of the whole idea and sank down into my chair as far as I could in a very impressively type of attitude.

‘Summer,’ said Mum, ‘if you will just give me one second to explain the idea I’ve had?’

‘Humpf,’ I said again.

Mum sighed loudly and said, ‘What about if you and Molly were allowed to do absolutely all the organizing and choose all the food, the decorations and everything with no help from me? And you can ask another of your friends along too, if you want?’

Now this was what is called An Offer You Cannot Refuse.

‘Yeeeehah!’ I yelled, leaping up out of my chair for the second time during this conversation and dancing an even madder and dance than the one I had danced before. ‘Hooray and yippi-di-do-dah!’ I added For Good Measure.

I had to get on the phone at once and immediately to Molly, of course. There is nothing she likes better than a party. And if it is a surprise party then that is, as she would say, ‘So Much The Better’ (which I have always thought is a bit of a weirdo and slightly Shakespearical way of speaking, but Molly thinks it is more sophisticateder than just speaking the Plain Queen’s English).

‘Molleeeeee!’ I said, when she answered the phone, which is the way I always say her name when I have something exciting-making to say to her. It’s kind of our special code, to prepare her for what might come next, in other words an announcement of a highly fanterabulous nature.

‘I’m sorry, who is this?’ said Molly, in an I’m-being-a-snotty-grown-up tone of talking.

‘Er, it’s me!’ I said.

‘And who is “me”?’ she went on in the same huffy way.

And then I remembered that I had kind of run off when we had been in the park and I realized Molly was Making A Point of being annoyed with me, so I said, ‘Molls, I am sorry I was grumpy, but I have got some ultra-mega-tastical news to tell you, so please can you forgive me and just listen a minute?’

‘O - k a a a a y,’ Molly said, dragging the word out as if it was a vastly heavy object of an immovable nature. I decided to ignore this and Ploughed On Regardless (which does not mean that I decided to do a spot of farming, but that I carried on talking).

‘Mum has said I can organize a surprise party for April in two weeks’ time on her birthday which is April 13th and I can ask you to help me and actually come to the party too and I can have another friend as well if I want, which I think I do want as then it would not be just a boring grown-ups’ party where they talk about the weather and the government and tell us how tall we are all getting, and—’

‘Whooppppeeeee!’ shouted Molly, which was good as it gave me a chance to actually breathe and stop myself from going purple in the face and possibly faint. It also gave me a chance to feel with a sense of relief that she was no longer cross with me. ‘I am coming round right now,’ she said excitedly. ‘Do not move or do ANYTHING without me.’

I hesitated for a milli-second and then said, ‘Erm – can I put the phone down?’

CLICK.

That was Molly putting the phone down at her house. ‘OK,’ I thought. ‘It’s probably all right for me to do that too: putting the phone down could not possibly count as actually moving, could it?’ Then I thought, ‘How will I go to open the door if I am not allowed to “move or do anything”?’

‘MUM!’ I shouted. ‘Molly is coming round in about a few minutes and she has said I must not move, so will you answer the door?’

Mum came out into the hall and looked at me weirdly and said, ‘What on earth are you talking about, Summer?’

Just then the doorbell went, so I gestured to the door with a flick of my head, and Mum sighed and went to open it.

‘Hello, Molly,’ said Mum. ‘Do come in. Apparently I have just been employed as Summer’s own personal slave.’

Molly curled her lip in puzzlement and said, ‘What?’

Mum shook her head, ‘Nothing. Come in.’

Molly ran up to me and squealed. ‘I’ve brought one of my new notebooks especially so that we can start planning and Making Lists! Let’s go!’

‘You told me not to move,’ I said.

‘You can be one hundred and ten per cent der-brainish, sometimes,’ she said, but in a sort of friendly way, with her head on one side. ‘I meant it FIGURATIVELY, not Absolutely Literally,’ she explained.

‘Oh RIGHT!’ I laughed in response to Molly. ‘Come on then!’ And we did literally zoom up to my room with Honey hot on our heels. Once she was in safely, I slammed the door behind us and we started planning.

Now, as I have already mentioned Molly is RENOWNED in our school for being the Queen of Notebooks, but this new one which she had brought with her was something else. In fact, I would say that it should have been protected by a law for the Protection of Areas of Stationery of . It had a cloth sort of cover like an Olden Fashioned Days reading book and it had gold sticky-uppy letters on it. And it also had a swirly purple and light blue pattern all over it like a kaleidoscope pattern when you look down the tube and turn the bottom bit. It made me SOLWH (which is a short-for type of language that Molly and I have invented for: ‘Sigh Out Loud With Happiness’).

Molly did a beamy smile of satisfaction. ‘It is mega-lush, isn’t it? I am only going to write in my most neatest handwriting in it, and I am only going to use these really thin propellery pencils on the pages so that if I make a HIDEOUS mistake, I can rub it out and it will not have spoilt the general beauty of the thing,’ she said importantly.

I did agree that it was important not to spoil it.

‘Now first of all we must decide on a THEME,’ said Molly.

‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘But I am not one hundred and ten per cent certain that April will like having a party with a theme.’

‘Oh, she’ll like it all right,’ said Molly. ‘People always do. My auntie had a party for her fiftieth or something – it was one of those big parties people have for an Old Age. It might have been forty or even sixty, actually . . . Anyway, who cares? She just got old. The important thing is that she had a theme which was basically “silver”, so the house was decorated in silver things and everyone came wearing something silver and it was MEGA as I was allowed to buy some shoes that were actually silver! So what I say is, if you can have a theme when you have got to one of those ancient ages, then why not have one when you are young like April?’

‘April is not YOUNG!’ I exclaimed. ‘And I do not want to wear silver shoes, thank you very much. They will not go with my auburn shade of hair.’

‘I am not suggesting we copy the exact theme that my auntie had, for heaven’s above sake,’ said Molly impatiently. ‘And April may not be young, but she does still like to go out and have fun at least, so we should make sure that this party of hers is the most fun ever.’

‘Mmm,’ I said again.

‘So,’ said Molly, after she had sat and tapped her pencil against her teeth for a while and I had started daydreaming and yawning. ‘How can we make this party totally different and special?’

We both went silent. Honey got bored and padded over from where she had been sniffing around by my bed and put her head in my lap and sighed very loudly.

I stroked Honey’s head as I thought and I looked into her chocolatey brown eyes . . . And that is when I had my most SPECTACULAR wave of brain activity that I have ever had (almost).

‘PUPPIES!’ I shouted, punching the air in a triumphalist salute.

I grinned at my Best Friend, expecting that she would join in with my victorious feelings, but she was looking at me with an expression which said, ‘You are the looniest loony tune on Radio Loony and I am going to switch you off in a minute.’

‘What?’ I said, my grin fading fast.

‘Er – “What?” yourself,’ said Molly.

‘Eh?’ I said. This conversation was going to turn into a very boring one unless we were careful.

‘“Puppies” what?? Why do you always have to bring puppies into everything? I mean, I love puppies of course I do, but puppies and parties do not mix, not unless the party is FOR the puppy, which in this case it is most definitely not. Not unless there is a particular puppy who is having a birthday any time soon – oh!’

And finally she did at last stop talking and had a bit of a Light-Bulb Moment herself and she realized what it was that was making me so excited and victoriously triumphalist.

‘Honey’s birthday!’ I said, nodding, as the face of my Best Friend lit up and looked how mine felt – tight and smiley and sparkly with happiness at my Very Brilliant Idea.

‘Honey’s birthday is the same week as April’s as it so happens – remember Frank told us she was born at Easter that time he came into school and announced that “A Dog is for Life, not Just for Christmas” and we all teased him because it had just been Easter?’

‘YES!’ said Molly and she began scribbling furiously in her Notebook of Outstanding Beauty in a way that was not at all mindful of its specialness, in other words she was not using her bestest writing but rather making a bit of a big old scribble in it.

This is what she wrote:

[I should point out that this last bit was Molly’s opinion. Frank can be quite a laugh.]

‘We need to think about food too,’ I pointed out. ‘And decorations and stuff. Mum has said we can have a Budget.’

‘Faberoony!’ Molly cried. ‘So let’s brainstorm food, then.’ And she scribbled away some more.

‘I suppose we ought to get some of those doggy chocolates and bones and chews in the shape of shoes and things for the dogs?’ I suggested.

‘Good idea,’ said Molly, nodding seriously and noting down those items on her list. ‘In fact there are so many cool treats you can buy for dogs these days – like those weird red balls you can fill with biscuits so that the dogs can roll them around and get the biscuits out.’

‘Oh yeah! Doggy biscuits!’ I cried. ‘Write down “All manner of shape, colour and size of dog biscuits”.’

‘And what about a cake for April?’ Molly asked.

‘And one for Honey!’ I cried, getting quite over-excitical. I loved going to the pet shop and looking at all the treats for pooches – and now I had a Budget to go and buy loads of them!

‘It might be fun to make some decorations,’ Molly suggested, tapping her pencil against her teeth. ‘We should probably put “card” and “pens” on the shopping list just in case.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘We could cut out paw-print patterns and stick them on the walls and windows. And maybe make some of those little flags on strings?’

‘Bunting,’ said Molly.

‘What?’ I said, puzzled.

‘That’s what those little flags on strings are called,’ said Molly impatiently.

I decided to ignore her know-it-all manner and move on. ‘By the way, I don’t think we should tell April about the super brainwave of having dogs at the party.’

Molly nodded in a DECISIVE way and tapped her notebook with her pencil. ‘I absolutely and positively agree with you,’ she said. ‘If this party is a surprise, we should not actually tell her about any of the details of it anyway, should we?’

‘But we will have to tell someone to get April to the party otherwise she won’t come and then it would be a surprise party without her, which would not be much fun or indeed much of a surprise,’ I pointed out.

Molly shook her head in a sad and sorry-for-me way and said, ‘Honestly, Summer, you can be quite a few sandwiches short of the full picnic sometimes you know. You will have to tell NICK of course.’

I was muddled up with excitement and was not thinking in a straight line. ‘But how do I tell Nick without April overhearing or finding out in some way?’ I said.

Molly said, ‘Hmmm,’ thoughtfully.

Then her eyes went very wide and shiny and she beamed a big large smile and put her finger in the air as though she had just had a moment, which our teacher told us once is an Ancient Greek word for saying she had had the most brilliant idea, and she said, ‘We will AMBUSH him at work!’