Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCR0GYERN8EXTM9SB38Q2P2

The van smelled of egg sandwich and ambition. Molly had spread the blueprints across the dashboard, which were not blueprints at all but a birthday invitation with a unicorn on it and a hand-drawn map of the Pemberton back garden. "Right," she said. "Gift table. North-east corner, under the bunting. Forty-two RSVPs, so we're looking at, conservatively, sixty presents." "Sixty." Bill whistled. "That's a lot of Lego." "That's a lot of *unopened* Lego, Bill. Sealed box, mint condition. Do you know what a sealed 2014 Millennium Falcon goes for?" "I know what my nephew's went for. He traded it for a hamster." "Your nephew is an idiot and I will not hear his name in this vehicle." Bill unwrapped the second half of his sandwich, considered it, then set it down on the unicorn. "Can I raise a concern?" "You may raise one concern." "It's a children's party." "That's not a concern, that's an observation." "It's a *concern* because children are, and I say this with love, feral. Last Christmas at my sister's, a four-year-old bit me on the wrist for approaching the trifle. Not near the trifle. *Approaching* it." "We're not going near the trifle." "You say that now, Molly, but there's always a trifle." Molly tapped the map with a chewed biro. "Twelve fifteen, magician arrives. Uncle Barry, does forty minutes of card tricks with the enthusiasm of a man in a custody dispute. All eyes on the patio. That's our window." "And the parents?" "Kitchen. Drinking prosecco out of mugs and complaining about the school catchment area. They will not move. They are structural." "And the dog?" There was a pause of the sort that Bill had learned to fear. "There's a dog?" "Labradoodle. Name of Sausage." "Molly." "Sausage is not a problem. Sausage is a *solution*." She produced, from the footwell, an entire cooked chicken in a carrier bag. "We deploy the bird at the fence line. Sausage follows the bird. Sausage becomes, in effect, our employee." "You've bought a chicken for the dog." "I've *invested* in a chicken for the dog. And before you ask, yes, I got one for us as well, because I'm not an animal." Bill rubbed his face with both hands, which he did when he was about to agree to something regrettable. "How do we carry sixty presents?" "Bin bags. Two each. We go in as bin men." "To a birthday party." "Nobody looks at a bin man, Bill. A bin man is a ghost in a high-vis vest. We walk in, we fill the bags, we walk out, and if anyone asks, we say the council's doing a Saturday recycling trial." "And if the birthday girl notices her presents leaving in a bin bag?" Molly turned to him, and something almost tender crossed her face. "Then we tell her," she said, "that they've gone to a better place." "That's the worst thing anyone has ever said in this van." "Put your vest on."