Everyone knows that planning for a sleepover is almost as much fun as actually going to one. Lottie and her friends couldn’t have the sleepover on a school night, so they had to wait two whole days for it to be Friday. In the meantime, Lottie tried to carry on with her normal activities. At home, she spied on the neighbours like she always did, and wrote down what her parents watched on television at night, who they spoke to on the phone and what they ate for breakfast. At school, Lottie continued her tally of Miss Moody’s sweeties. She played loads of rounds of Not Being Spotted, and she found out Year Three’s homework before Miss Moody even assigned it. Lottie also kept count of how many times she saw Mrs Snoop walking by Crabtree School. That number was getting worryingly high.

Mostly though, Lottie planned for the sleepover. Her notebook was filled with pages and pages of suggested sleepover plans, lists of things she wanted to bring with her, and even a diagram of exactly how they should sleep so that they would all fit in the tent.

What was truly exciting was that all of the sleepover plans had to be kept secret. Mrs Peabody had agreed to let Ava, Zoe, Rani, Isabel and Lottie spend the night at Crabtree School, but she couldn’t very well invite the rest of the school to join them. A sleepover of that size would be a nightmare to organize. Also, if they were going to coax Lady Lovelypaws to come out of hiding, they couldn’t have too many people around. But they didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or have any more tantrums like Lola’s, so they had to keep their plans to themselves. This meant whispering.

“We have to tell ghost stories,” whispered Ava during PE on the Thursday. “Every sleepover has ghost stories.” Ava and Zoe had already had three sleepovers and there had been ghost stories at every one.

“Not the really scary ones!” whispered Zoe. Thanks to Ava’s crazy imagination, Zoe had to check inside her cupboard and under her bed every night before she went to sleep.

During break time on Thursday afternoon, Rani whispered to them about the midnight feasts her older brothers had when they went to sleepovers. “When it gets very dark and very late,” Rani looked round to make sure no one else was listening, “we have to go to the kitchen and sneak loads of food. Especially sweeties and cakes.”

Isabel thought that they would have to have a midnight tooth-brushing session, too. She didn’t want their teeth turning black and falling out, like Miss Moody’s were going to.

After lunch on Friday, Isabel and Lottie sat in the tree house writing up the final sleepover plan whilst the other three stayed below, chasing away anyone who came near the ladder.

When they were finished with the final, official sleepover plan, it looked like this:

Miss Moody kindly made photocopies of the schedule for each of the five friends, for the Year Three teacher was in on the sleepover plan too. She had even agreed to stay the night to give Mrs Peabody some grown-up company.

It was a very strange thing to arrive at school at teatime. Lottie felt nervous as she tugged at Pip’s lead.

“My goodness, Lottie, that is a big bag for just one night!” said Mrs Peabody, as she opened the front door. With her dad’s help, Lottie wheeled her giant suitcase through the hallway as Pip trudged along behind her.

“Is Pip staying?” asked Mrs Peabody. “Won’t he chase Lady Lovelypaws away?”

Mrs Peabody, Lottie and Lottie’s dad all stared at Pip. The old dog had stopped under the giant statue of Lady Hawthorne. Pip looked to one side of the hallway, then to the other. He sniffed the air. He lay down, rolled over on to his back and began to snore.

“Pip doesn’t do much chasing,” Lottie’s dad explained. “Mostly he does sleeping. We thought he might keep you all company.”

“Ah yes, of course,” said Mrs Peabody. “But does he like cats?”

“Of course he does. And Pip is a dog detective, aren’t you, Pip?” said Lottie, stroking his head. “Pip always looks like he is sleeping,” Lottie told Mrs Peabody. “So you forget that he is there. But secretly, he’s watching everything. He has come to help us find Lady Lovelypaws!”

The dog detective did not move when Lottie’s dad said goodbye and goodnight, nor did he open his eyes when, one by one, the other slumber party guests arrived.

When all the parents had finished their “be good!” speeches and were gone, Lottie looked around the big front hallway for the best place to set up the tent.

“Here!” she said, pointing right next to the statue of Lady Hawthorne. “We’ll put the tent here, facing the front door.” Lottie opened her ginormous suitcase. She took out a huge tent and loads of tent poles.

The friends had played with the tent so many times in Lottie’s garden that they put it up in seconds. Mrs Peabody watched in amazement as each girl took out a sleeping bag and began unrolling it inside the expertly assembled tent.

“I hope you don’t mind, girls,” the headmistress said, “but Miss Moody and I are going to sleep in my office. I’ve never been very fond of tents – and I must tell you that I prefer cats to dogs,” she added nervously, watching Lottie unpack Pip’s dog bed and put it next to her sleeping bag.

Mrs Peabody went to find Miss Moody whilst the preparations continued. Isabel reached into her flowery overnight bag and pulled out a big quilt, which she spread out on the floor in front of the tent. Then she took out some bunting and began to hang it around their campsite. She had also made a sign for the side of the tent that read DETECTIVES SLEEPING on one side and DETECTIVES AWAKE on the other.

 

Ava unpacked a pile of books and a whole load of dolls from her purple rucksack and laid them out on the quilt. She had brought five dolls, one for each of them, and pyjamas and a change of clothes for each doll. The dolls even had their own little tent, with sleeping bags and tiny pillows.

Zoe had a stack of board games and some glow-in-the-dark stickers to put on the ceiling of the tent. “This way, it’s like we are sleeping outside, but without the wild animals and bugs,” she explained.

Rani had brought nail polish and was proudly setting it out next to the quilt. She had special glitter that went on top of the polish and a small battery-powered fan to make it dry faster.

Soon they had a proper, cosy campsite full of sleepovery things to do.

Lottie waited until her friends had finished unpacking before reaching back into her own suitcase. Then, as Rani, Zoe, Ava and Isabel looked on, Lottie took out five torches, an ancient camera, two pieces of rope, four tins of cat food, a magnifying glass, a compass, three new toy mice filled with catnip, five water bottles, the photocopied sleepover plans and a stack of envelopes.

Lottie had not forgotten the real reason for the sleepover. She arranged all of her supplies on the quilt.

“What is the rope for?” asked Rani.

“In case we need to tie up a baddie,” said Lottie. “Or Lady Lovelypaws, if she keeps on running away. And the envelopes are in case we find clues.”

They were dividing up the torches when Mrs Peabody and Miss Moody appeared with big boxes of pizza.

“Let me just pop into the kitchen and get some plates,” said Mrs Peabody, but it turned out that there was no need: Lottie went to her suitcase and returned with paper plates, serviettes and plastic cutlery, although only Isabel and the grown-ups wanted knives and forks.

They had a pizza picnic on the quilt as the sun went down behind the playground trees. Colonel and Mrs Crunch appeared with a big tray of apple crumble for pudding. The dark school loomed large around them as the night set in, and the halls echoed with teatime chatter and the sound of giggling.