Run: 2026-03-06-01KK1JCJF6EF6CZKGS6JNWH700

Molly and Bill crouched behind the garden shed like two underfunded masterminds, peering through a gap in the fence at the children’s party next door. Balloons bobbed over the lawn in frantic colors, a clown collapsed onto a deck chair smoking suspiciously adult cigarettes, and a long table groaned beneath cakes, cordial, and a mountain of brightly wrapped presents. Bill adjusted his flat cap with the gravity of a surgeon. “We go in smiling.” “That’s your plan?” Molly whispered. “Children trust confidence,” he said. “And waistcoats.” Molly eyed his mustard-colored waistcoat, which made him look less like a guest and more like a substitute geography teacher who’d lost a bet. She herself wore a cardigan covered in knitted ducks, acquired from a charity shop precisely because it radiated the harmless menace of an aunt who brought raisins. Beyond the fence, a magician was extracting scarves from his sleeve with the exhausted air of a man pulling rent money from the void. Parents clustered near the buffet, distracted by prosecco and competitive anecdotes about schools with waiting lists longer than prison sentences. Molly produced a hand-drawn map of the garden. The presents were stacked beside the trampoline, guarded only by a pug in a paper crown. Bill studied the dog, the children, the clown, then nodded. “Right,” he murmured. “We steal Christmas in June.”