f we make our own doggy treats, this will truly be a party to remember!’ Molly announced.

‘But why in the high heavens above would anyone who is at all sane and normal want to COOK THEIR OWN DOG FOOD?’ I asked. Molly shot me a particularly strange look.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Er, I seem to remember that someone was quite keen on cooking for their pooch when that pooch was expecting puppies?’ she said pointfully.

‘No – what? Oh . . . !’ I said, and suddenly I felt very silly and sheepish indeed. Because the thing is, when Honey was expecting, her eating habits went just a little bit , to say the least, and I was so worried that she was not eating properly that I looked it all up in my book, Perfect Puppies, and I discovered that a pregnant dog can often go off her normal food and that it can be a good idea to tempt her with other things. Such as peanut butter on toast, and scrambled egg made with butter and cream.

‘That was different,’ I muttered defensively. ‘Honey was pregnant, and it is well known that pooches can go off their usual food at such a delicate and sometimes difficult time.’

‘Anyway,’ said Molly, ‘I actually think it is a faberoony idea to cook for the pooches. It will be such fun! Not to mention very responsible in a dog-owner-type way, as then we can be one hundred and ten per cent certain that we will not be feeding them with ultra-dangerous and in fact positively TOXIC (i.e. poisonous) stuff. I bet you already have a lot of what we need in the cupboards, so we might not even have to spend as much from the budget as if we went out and got all those expensive doggy treats from the pet shop. In fact, let’s go through the cupboards now and check off what else we need to make those recipes. We will have to re-do the shopping list, but that is OK, as I have my notebook with me anyway, so it is no Big Deal to make a few AMENDMENTS.’

I had been about to agree enthusiastically when I realized what it was Molly was IMPLYING. ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said slowly. ‘Did you just say that I would already have what we needed? As in “Let’s do the cooking at Summer’s house”?’

‘Ye-es,’ said Molly in a tone which suggested that I was rather stupid and Slow on the Uptake, in other words, not on the same length of wave as she was. ‘You don’t think we can do the cooking at my place, do you? For a start Mum would go bonkers doolally round the twist if she caught us mucking up her PRISTINE kitchen, and for a finish, it’s your sister’s party, so obviously it makes perfect sense to be doing the cooking here.’

‘But what if MY mum goes bonkers doolally round the twist?’ I asked. ‘She wasn’t exactly chuffed to bits when she caught me cooking scrambled eggs with butter and cream. She said, “I’ve heard of cravings, but this is ridiculous,” and, “Not even I was that expensive to feed when I was expecting,” and other things of an outraged and rather angry nature. And I can hardly even have the good excuse of Honey being pregnant this time. PLUS if Mum finds we are cooking dog food, she will then find out the dogs are coming to the party and she will definitely then try to Put a Stop to It.’

‘Summer,’ Molly said, in a patient-but-really-impatient tone of speaking. ‘Your mum was cross last time because you used very expensive ingredients and you finished all the eggs in the house and did not replace them; whereas we have saved some of our budget for the dogs, remember? So we can always get more ingredients on our shopping trip this afternoon. And your mum is out at work today and actually quite a lot of the time, whereas mine is not, so we can cook while your mum is not here and she will not notice if we tidy up. Plus your mum is not as fussy about the pristine-ness of her kitchen as my mum is.’

‘Humpf,’ I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, because as usual Molly was one hundred and ten per cent right about everything. I did not quite like what she was INSINUATING about Mum not being as fussy. It sounded as though she was hinting that my mum was not as clean and tidy as hers. But then, on second thoughts, Molly’s mum was the kind of mum who does not like you to sit on the sofa for at least two days after she has cleaned it in case you make a dent in the poofed-up cushions. Maybe it was better to have a slightly more chaotic and untidy mum after all.

‘Well,’ I said eventually. ‘I suppose you are right. It is my sister’s party, and it was my amazing idea to have the pooches come along too, so it is only fair that I get to organize the cooking at my house.’

Aha! I thought that was a rather clever way of me IMPOSING a bit of control on the situation. I made a mental note to try and remember such intelligent and crafty TACTICS in the future.

Molly did look ever so slightly dumbfounded and bamboozled. But I could tell that she was just really desperate to start the cooking, and she knew she could not do it at her house, so she did not argue about who had had what amazing idea. Instead she said, ‘That’s settled then. So, let’s look at those recipes.’

We took the laptop into the kitchen and put it on the table, and Molly said she would read out the ingredients while I climbed up on to the work surface so that I could get to Eye Level with the cupboards.

‘Let’s start with the doggy hamburgers,’ Molly suggested. ‘They look like they’d be really easy to make.’

‘OK,’ I said, looking down. ‘What do we need?’

Molly peered at the computer screen. ‘Vegetable oil,’ she read out.

I pushed the botdes and packages around until I caught sight of a yellowish plastic bottle. ‘Check!’ I said.

Molly reached for her notebook and wrote ‘vegetable oil’ in it and then put a big tick beside it.

‘Molly,’ I said. ‘Why are you writing it down and then ticking it off? It is obvious we already have it, so there is no need to go to all that palaver.’

Molly pursed her lips and shook her head at me. ‘It is important to know we have all Bases Covered,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to go all the way to the supermarket and then come back and find we should have got something ESSENTIAL, in other words something we absolutely cannot do without.’

I raised my eyes to the high heavens.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘What next?’

‘Boiled eggs,’ she said. ‘Two.’

I put my hands on my hips. ‘Well obviously we do not keep a cupboard load of boiled eggs!’ I cried. ‘What nonsense.’

Molly tutted. ‘You are being loonitistical,’ she said. ‘You just need two fresh eggs and then you boil them, you numpty!’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well Mum keeps eggs in the fridge, so why don’t you have a look seeing as I am up here?’

Molly opened the fridge. ‘Only four eggs there. We had better put eggs on the list then, in case your mum freaks.’ She looked up at me. ‘Like last time,’ she added, sniggering a bit.

‘Molly, shut the door properly,’ I snapped. ‘Honey is ultra-talented at getting in there otherwise.’ I shuddered as I remembered the CARNAGE, in other words mega-disastrous mess, she had made the last time she had managed to break and enter the fridge.

Molly went back to reading out from the recipe and I went back to rummaging, and we ended up with a list that looked like this:

The only other things we needed were porridge oats and the vegetable oil, both of which Mum had in the cupboards. No one in our family has ever actually eaten porridge, thankfully. In fact, it was only there because April used it to make her own gunky face pack which was a horrid grey mixture she used to leave in the fridge and which smelt terrible.

Mum will probably be only too glad to have the oats used up instead of leaving them to clutter up the cupboard, I told myself.

But in actual fact I could not get rid of the sinking feeling that Mum was not going to be very glad about any of the details of this latest Molly Cook-style Masterful Plan.