called round at Molly’s later on while Mum was battling with the Ironing Pile. The Ironing Pile was making her mood worse and worse as it is her least favouritest chore in the universe of chores, so when I said I was going round to Molly’s after tea, she just muttered at me and told me not to come home late.

I felt utterly by the time I got to my Best Friend’s house.

Even the sight of little Mr Titch (as I sometimes like to call him) running up and down the hallway with his most loved cuddly in his jaws, shaking his head from side to side like an insane maniac, was not enough to lift my mood.

Luckily Molly told me that she had been getting her Thinking Cap on about the party (which does not mean that she has a special hat to wear for when she is pondering about things, as that would just be plain daft, it means that she had been doing a lot of in-depth planning and problem-solving). This made me feel slightly more hopeful.

Until, that is, Molly said, ‘I have been working on some calculations, Summer, and I can very safely tell you that there is No Way Ho-Zay that we can get all the stuff that we need with the very small amount of money that your mum has given you, so I am afraid we are going to have to ask for an Increase of the Budget.’ She said this with her nose a little bit in the air and her clipboard up high as though she was a teacher on a school trip, ticking off who was on the bus.

I wanted to say, ‘So Frank was right?’ But I felt too to say anything mean like that, so instead I said, ‘Oh?’

‘Yes,’ said Molly, tapping her pen against her clipboard. Then she peered at me in a CONSPIRATORIAL way and beckoned me to follow her quickly up the stairs. Titch followed with his cuddly, even though Strictly Speaking he is not permitted to go upstairs. But for once Molly seemed to have more important things on her mind than the extremely strict Cook Family Rulebook.

Then once we were all safely inside in her room with the door closed, Molly said in a low voice: ‘I did a HACK into my mum’s Supermarket Online Shopping list and I pretended to do a shop of all the things I think we need for the party so that I could see how much it would cost.’

‘Wow!’ I breathed. I had to admit, this was pretty impressive of her. I would never have thought of finding out like that. I would probably have gone around the supermarket with a paper list of shopping and a calculator and written it all down and then I would probably have been thrown out of the store for Wasting Precious Time when it became obvious to the store manager that I was not actually going to buy one single item.

But Molly is much cleverer than me, which is why even though she can be the bossiest boot in the boot rack, she is also a rather exceptionally good person to be Best Friends with.

‘That is amazing, Molly,’ I said.

Molly went pink with pleasure at my admiringness of her, and nodded. ‘I know,’ she said.

‘So, can you show me the hack?’ I asked.

Molly put on her serious face again. ‘I am afraid I can’t cos Mum is on the computer at the moment,’ she told me. ‘But I can tell you, the shopping bill came out to be a lot more than the amount your mum has given you.’

‘How much more, Molly?’ I said despairingly. ‘I have to tell you that I have already asked Mum for an increase of the budget, and she has said NO.’

‘Well, we are going to have to find the money from somewhere. Fifty pounds does not go far these days,’ she said importantly, not answering my question, I noticed.

‘Molly,’ I tried again. ‘How much—?’

Molly waved a hand at me, looking slightly pink for some reason: ‘We really do need to Think Outside the Box, in other words, we need a plan. SO!’ she cried, pointing one finger in the air. ‘This is what we must do – and there are Two Options,’ she said, putting another finger in the air and dropping her pen.

I waited. By now I was actually a bit struck with awe at Molly’s mega-organizational mood. And I was very glad that she was full of ideas and obviously not feeling as desperational as I was.

‘Option One,’ she said, ‘is that we do not buy everything, which is obviously not an option at all otherwise the party will be completely useless—’

‘BUT—!’ I cried.

Molly interrupted. ‘And Option Two is – we find a Masterly Plan to earn some extra money!’

She clasped her clipboard to her and beamed a big satisfied smile.

‘Huh?’ I said.

Molly frowned. ‘Huh?’ she said. ‘Is that all you can say when I have gone to so much trouble to work all this out for you?’

I said, ‘But you have not worked out anything! We cannot just “earn money” like that.’ I clicked my fingers. ‘We are quite young children, in case you hadn’t noticed. How are we supposed to get a job in real life?’

Molly chewed her lip and looked a tiny bit worried and un-Molly-like for about one nanosecond. And then her eyes twinkled and she said, ‘Aha! We can wear a disguise and pretend we are older than we are and I can fake a letter on my dad’s office notepaper to Employers everywhere to say that we are marvellous at doing jobs, and then they will all employ us and pay us lots of money.’

‘STOP! STOP!’ I shouted, waving my arms in the air. I was now feeling rather un-admiring of my best friend who seemed to be losing the plot ultra-fast. ‘This is just about the craziest of crazy plans you have ever come up with, Molly Cook. In fact, it is even more crazier than my sister’s plan for wearing fake beards around the house when Honey was freaked out by Nick’s beard.’

‘AHA!’ Molly shouted, waving her arms in the air now, and narrowly missing my head with her clipboard. ‘I am glad you reminded me of the beards, Summer! We can use them as part of our disguise.’

‘NOOOOOO!’ I cried. Had the world gone completely insane and Around the Twist all of a sudden? Or was I trapped inside a particularly weirdo and frankly rather nasty which if I didn’t wake up from soon would muck up all the systems of my brain forever?

Molly had her Extremely Cross face on, so I panicked and said, ‘What I mean is, I have a Very Strong Feeling that April got rid of those beards quite a long time ago. Maybe there is another way that we could earn some money . . .’

At that moment Titch stopped jumping around for once and put his paw on my lap. Then he looked up at me with an expression I recognized from my own gorgeous Honey which I think said: when-are-you-going-to-stop-chin-waggling-and-take-me-for-a-walk? In other words he put his head on one side in his most cutesome pose and let out a little whine most pleadingly.

And that is when I had one of those ultra-sonic brainflashes of the kind that make your head go and your face go and your legs go springy with excitement.

‘That’s it!’ I cried, leaping up and dancing around the room, which resulted in Titch becoming very jumpy again indeed. ‘I have got it, By Jove!’ (I have always thought ‘By Jove’ was a rather fantabulous way of expressing excitement.)

Molly was looking rather a bit quizzical, but she did not try to get me to shut up so I carried on: ‘We can earn money AND have fun!’

‘Oh? How’s that then?’ said Molly.

At that point I turned very dramatical and whirled to face her like a superhero in a big cloak (although I was not of course actually wearing one myself at that PRECISE moment) and announced in a ‘taa-daaaaa’-type way of speaking: ‘We can advertise around the neighbourhood to say that we are available to WALK PEOPLE’S DOGS for them before and after school and we can charge them something like one pound a go.’

Molly shook her head violently. I felt my heart go skidding down into my socks so fast I thought I might be sick. How could she not see how utterly brilliant my plan was? Even Mr Titchical was on the exact same length of wave as me. He was bouncing up and putting his paws on Molly’s legs just as if he was trying to convince her of the intelligence and wonderment of my brainflash.

Molly shushed Titch and settled him down and then took what I thought was a whole eternity patting him with a deeply thoughtful look on her face.

Then she turned to me and said, ‘If we are going to do this then we should at least ask for two pounds every time.’

And then she arched one eyebrow at me in a devilish sort of a way and I grinned.

‘Molly Cook, you are an evil genius,’ I said. ‘Two pounds it is.’