On the way home, Mum, Molly and I could not stop nattering about how we were going to plan for the pups’ arrival. Nick said that Honey seemed to get on especially well with one of the male dogs called Poplar.

‘I must admit I preferred Poplar to the other dog too,’ he went on. ‘The other one was really bouncy, but Poplar was more relaxed and cuddly.’

‘Is that important?’ Molly asked, scribbling away again.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nick. ‘You have to know the dad’s character as well as the mum’s, because it gives you some idea about the kind of pups you’ll be getting. You don’t want aggressive or over-energetic pups, believe me!’

Mum laughed. ‘Yes – Honey’s bouncy enough on her own!’

Poplar was a black Labrador who had already been a dad a few times. The breeder had been very proud of him and said he came from a good pedigree. He had shown Nick all the paperwork, and Nick was happy for Honey to stay with Poplar in a couple of weeks’ time.

‘A couple of weeks’ time!’ I had groaned. ‘Why not now?’

It was going to take nine weeks for the puppies to grow inside her as it was – why did we have to wait two more until Honey could stay with Poplar?

Mum and Nick looked at each other.

‘Honey’s not ready yet,’ Nick said simply. And that was that.

At last, after two weeks of Hell at school with Mrs Wotherspoon throwing herself at me like a whole ton of bricks for every single thing I did (and didn’t do), and two weeks of crossing the days off the calendar, Honey went to stay with Poplar. She was only gone for a couple of days, but the house felt very empty and strange without her around. When we got her back again, Nick told us in a most cryptical way that everything had ‘gone very well’ and that we should generally Keep An Eye on Honey and tell him if we noticed Anything Unusual. Whatever that meant. Nick promised that he would be On Hand for us and that I could call him whenever I wanted.

And so Molly and I went into Planning for Puppies Mode.

Frank also came round to see how Things Had Gone. Mum thought it was ‘sweet’ that Frank wanted to get involved, which slightly set my teeth on their edges, but I was so grateful to him for finding a way to get Mum to change her mind that I didn’t really mind him being there.

We left Honey to relax in her basket and took some drinks and snacks into the Den so that we could start our Planning Session.

Frank was being quite a laugh and kept saying things like, ‘Do you think Honey and Poplar are in luuuuuuurve like Romeo and Juliet?’

Then he put on a dramatical over-the-top Shakespeare accent and said, ‘Honey-o, Honey-o, wherefore art thou, Honey-o?’

Molly, however, did not find it one iota of a fraction amusing.

‘Frank,’ she said, ‘instead of acting like the fool that you are, could you please go away and leave us in peace?’

‘OOOOOOOH!’ Frank replied. ‘Well, if that’s your attitude—’

‘STOP!’ I yelled at the pair of them. ‘Listen, Frank, instead of arguing with Molly, why don’t you give me some proper advice on how to get ready for the pups’ arrival?’

Molly did her shocked and surprised face when I said this, which nearly almost made her choke as she was crunching on a mouthful of double-choc-chip cookie at the time.

‘No Way Ho-Zay!’ she shouted, her eyes all big and round like they were going to pop out of their sockets right there and then. ‘We didn’t need HIS help last time with Honey, so I don’t see one little bit why we need HIS help now.’

I gave Molly a long look to show her that she did not know what she was talking about. ‘Molly,’ I said slowly, ‘getting one eight-week-old puppy and bringing it home is quite a different matter from having seven or eight newborn pups to look after.’

‘But Honey will do most of the looking after, won’t she?’ Molly asked, a bit puzzled.

‘She will to start with, but she will need lots of help, Nick said,’ I explained.

‘Yeah,’ said Frank, grinning his head off. ‘And the thing is, Miss Know-It-All Molly Cook, my dog Meatball has actually had puppies, and I was there, so I know all about it.’

‘He’s right,’ I said, not letting Molly’s SCARY AND FLARY look put me off for once.

Molly frowned and did a grimacey thing with her mouth. ‘All right,’ she said when she saw that I had no Intention of Backing Down. ‘Please could you after all give us some advice, Frank?’ she asked, not looking at him as she spoke.

‘What’s it worth?’ Frank asked, picking his nose in the most unattractive way possible by scraping his finger round and round his nostril to get the hugest and stickiest bogey he could find. He eventually extractivated it and examined it close up. Goodness knows what he thought he would find in it – the Crown Jewels?

‘Listen, there is no need to be disgustivating,’ I said, becoming quite severely stern. ‘And anyway, if you really want to know what it is worth, I think it is worth you not flicking that bogey at us,’ I said firmly.

‘Don’t worry, I wouldn’t waste it on you,’ said Frank, popping it into his actual mouth right in front of us! Honestly, just as I think I can bear his company, he goes and ruins it by being Mr Gross-o-vator.

I took a deep breath and ignored his grim and inhuman behaviour. ‘What do we need to do first, Frank?’ I asked.

‘Let’s see – first of all you need a notebook to record all the important dates and things,’ he said.

‘Check!’ said Molly, waving her pink notebook at him in a very pleased-with-herself way.

‘Then you must make a list of everything you’ll need for the birth and then, you have to note down everything about the dog during the pregnancy – her weight and stuff – and then, when the pups are born, there is loads of information that you have to keep track of, like how much each pup weighs and so on.’

This was absolutely the Way To Molly’s Heart as she is the Queen of Lists.

‘Sounds dudey,’ said Molly. ‘What else?’

‘Then you need to prepare a den to put the whelping bed in,’ he said.

‘Whoooa!’ said Molly. ‘Stop right there. What’s a whelping bed? It sounds like an instrument of torture.’

Frank and I rolled our eyes at each other. ‘The whelping bed is the bed the puppies are born in and where they spend the first few weeks of their life,’ I said.

‘Oh that – I knew that,’ said Molly.

Frank spluttered a bit with laughter, but Pulled Himself Together when he caught sight of Molly’s glare and told us that we would also need a thermometer and lots of newspapers.

‘Then you must make a list and go shopping for the things you’ll need,’ he added.

I was secretly vastly impressed with that. Surely even Molly would agree that a boy who suggests a shopping trip is a pretty amazing sort of person.

‘Hurrah!’ I said.

‘Yahooo!’ said Molly. ‘Shopping! It’ll be a faberoony way to pass the time and stop us from going bonkers-crazy with Excitement!’

We had just over half a term to get ready. A whole nine weeks. How would we cope? And it was coming up to Christmas too. How much could the human brain deal with before it simply popped with an overload of ultra-excitable activity, I wondered?

By the end of the first week alone we had made a Comprehensive List of What to Have to Hand for the Big Event:

‘Hey, listen to this!’ Molly said one Friday night when she was sleeping over. ‘You know Nick said he would have to check Honey at twenty-one-ish days to see how she was getting on? Well, in Monica Sitstill’s book it says that by then he will be able to FEEL THE PUPPIES!’

‘Show me!’ I cried, scrabbling to get a closer look.

At about five weeks it is possible to feel the fetuses. Your vet will gently prod the mother’s belly to see how many puppies there are.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I was actually getting too excited to breathe, just thinking about Nick feeling lots of ting pups inside Honey’s tummy! It was a bit science-fictiony and freaky, but mega-exciting at the same time!

How was I going to wait until Day 21?