Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPT1MN6R88PQY6QJ7GN20F

Molly spread the napkin across the table and smoothed it flat with two fingers. "Here's the house," she said, drawing a lopsided square in ketchup. "Here's the garden. Here's the bouncy castle." "Why does the bouncy castle matter?" "Everything matters, Bill. The bouncy castle is where the parents go to stop feeling old. It's a distraction hub. Ten adults minimum, all facing away from the patio doors." "You've been watching it." "Tuesday, Wednesday, and half of Thursday until the mum came out with a bin bag and I had to pretend to be a surveyor." Bill picked up a chip and pointed it at her. "Did she believe you?" "She asked about her boundary line. I said it was fine. She cried a bit." "So we go in through the patio doors." "We go in through the patio doors at fourteen hundred hours, which is when the entertainer starts. His name is Mister Wobbles and he is legally required to hold their attention for forty minutes." "Legally?" "Contractually. Same thing, tighter." Bill leaned back and folded his arms, which was his thinking posture, and also his indigestion posture. "How many presents?" "Thirty-one children invited. Assume twenty-eight attend, assume two bring nothing because their parents forgot, assume four bring vouchers, which we don't want because vouchers are traceable and frankly insulting." "So twenty-two boxes." "Twenty-two boxes, average value eleven pounds, and before you say it, I know." "I wasn't going to say anything." "You were going to say two hundred and forty-two pounds." "I was going to say two hundred and forty-two pounds is less than we made on the wedding." "The wedding had a cash bar, Bill. This is different. This is about the sideboard." He stopped chewing. "What sideboard?" "There's a sideboard in the dining room with a locked drawer, and on Wednesday the dad opened that drawer with a key he keeps behind the clock, and inside that drawer is a coin collection his father left him, and he sat looking at it for eleven minutes like a man at a graveside." "So the presents are—" "Cover. Camouflage. Nobody phones the police about a coin collection when there are twenty-two crying children on the lawn. Nobody even looks in the drawer for a week." Bill was quiet for a moment. "That's cruel, Moll." "It's a party bag economy. They'll all get replacements by Sunday, better ones, guilt-funded. The children will do better out of this than we will." "And the dad?" "The dad," Molly said, "keeps his father's coins behind a clock in a drawer he opens when nobody's watching. That's not owning something. That's haunting yourself." "That's the worst justification I've ever heard you make." "I know. I've been working on it since Thursday and it isn't landing." Bill sighed and pulled the napkin toward himself, turning it around, studying the ketchup. "Bin bags or the wheelie?" "Wheelie. Bin bags rustle and children have the hearing of bats." "And Mister Wobbles?" "Mister Wobbles," Molly said, standing and putting on her coat, "is going to have a puncture at half one, and we are going to be extremely helpful about it."