Run: 2026-03-06-01KK1HZY6A97ACKHS1680GFFK0

Molly and Bill crouched behind the hedge of number twelve, staring at a garden gone rabid with bunting. Balloons bobbed like surveillance devices. A papier-mâché dinosaur guarded the gate with the dead-eyed confidence of hired security. Beyond it, children in cone hats shrieked around a trestle table sagging under cakes, juice cartons, and a mountainous pile of presents wrapped in enough glitter paper to blind an honest man. Bill adjusted his flat cap and studied the scene with criminal gravity. “Tiny guests, big haul.” “Focus,” Molly muttered. “Parents are the real police.” They had robbed jewellers, a racecourse, and once, disastrously, a magician, but this felt riskier. Children were erratic. They ran in packs. They asked direct questions. Worse, they noticed things. Molly, in a cardigan stolen from a lost property box, had decided they would pass as entertainers. Bill, wearing a crimson clown bow tie that made him look like a depressed tomato salesman, had argued for plumbers, then vicars, then surrender. A woman emerged carrying a tray of sausage rolls, and both thieves ducked so sharply the hedge shivered. Somewhere inside the garden, a little voice began crying over a burst balloon with the despair of opera. Molly grinned. Chaos: the old friend. By the slide, the present mountain gleamed, unattended for one glorious second, like treasure left foolishly in a dragon’s lunchroom.