Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPMWV0A1P8Q2TZ4F615JGV

The van smelled of stale crisps and ambition. Molly had spread a napkin across the dashboard and drawn what she insisted was a floor plan of the Hendersons' back garden, though it looked more like a diagram of a duck. "Right," she said, tapping the napkin. "Bouncy castle here. Trestle table here. Presents stacked at the base of the trestle table, which is here, under the bunting." Bill squinted. "Why's the bouncy castle got a beak?" "That's the entrance flap." "It's got an eye as well." "That's a shrub." Molly folded the napkin with dignity. "Focus, Bill. Sixteen children, average haul of two presents apiece, that's thirty-two units of merchandise. Some of those units are Lego." "I don't like it." "You said that about the tombola." "The tombola was different. The tombola was adults." Bill shifted in his seat, which squeaked in sympathy. "Kids notice things. Kids stare. I once stole a hubcap in front of a toddler and he tracked me for three streets like a small furious detective." "Which is why we're not going in as burglars." Molly reached into the back and produced, with the reverence of a magician, a bright yellow costume of indeterminate species. "We're going in as entertainment." Bill looked at it for a long moment. "What is that." "Mister Wobbles." "Mister Wobbles is a bee." "Mister Wobbles is a *duck*." "That explains the napkin," Bill said. "Molly, that costume has a stinger." "It's a tail." "It's yellow with black stripes." "It's a very unusual duck." She thrust it at him. "You'll be Mister Wobbles. You'll do the balloon animals, you'll keep the children herded near the bouncy castle, and while sixteen sets of eyes are watching you fail to make a giraffe, I'll be shifting presents into the wheelie bin." "The wheelie bin." "I've lined it. It's clean. Cleanish." Bill held the costume at arm's length. "And how do we get the bin out?" "We wheel it out. Nobody in the history of British suburbia has ever questioned a person wheeling a bin. You could wheel a bin through a bank robbery and someone would hold the door." "That's true, actually," Bill admitted. "That's disturbingly true." "Thank you." He began, with enormous reluctance, to unzip the thing. "And if a child asks me for a balloon dog?" "Give them a balloon." "Just a balloon?" "Say it's a balloon *snake*. Children have no standards; they've only been alive four years." Molly checked her watch. "Party starts at two. We arrive at two-fifteen, looking harassed, because a punctual entertainer is a suspicious entertainer." Bill got one leg into the costume and paused, half-duck, half-man, entirely miserable. "Molly. Be honest with me. Is this the lowest we've ever gone?" Molly considered the question with genuine care, the way one considers a fine wine. "No," she said. "The nativity was lower. We stole a donkey." "We *borrowed* a donkey." "We borrowed it into a different postcode." She started the engine. "Zip up, Mister Wobbles. Think of the Lego."