Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCQQ3YB2HBMMVPCMQE8037H

Molly had drawn the layout of the Pemberton back garden on the back of a napkin, using ketchup for the bouncy castle and a mustard smear to indicate the trestle table where the presents would be stacked like a glittering paper ziggurat. Bill studied it with the gravity of a man reading his own autopsy report, then dipped a chip in the bouncy castle. "That's structural," Molly said. The plan, as she explained it over the following forty minutes, involved a rented clown costume, a magician's collapsible sack, and a diversion involving the neighbour's Labrador and eleven sausages. Bill's contribution was a pair of binoculars he had already broken and an insistence that they synchronise watches, despite neither of them owning a watch. He synchronised his phone with the microwave instead, which put them both nine minutes into the future. There were, Molly conceded, complications. The Pemberton child was turning six, which meant thirty guests, four hovering mothers, and a professional entertainer named Mister Sparkle who reportedly boxed on weekends. Bill wiped mustard from his thumb and considered the ruined napkin. "We're stealing from children," he said. "Small children," Molly agreed. "They can't identify us. They can't even read." Bill nodded slowly, reassured, and ordered another plate of chips.