Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCR1VF3YC3K5AGPDJ2ESHK7

The blueprints were drawn on the back of a placemat from the Golden Wok, which Bill considered a triumph of improvisation and Molly considered a health hazard. Sweet-and-sour sauce had bled through the paper, turning the west lawn into a swamp and the bouncy castle into what appeared to be a large orange tumor. Molly tapped the tumor with a chewed pen. "Explain this again." "Inflatable castle. Turrets, moat, the works. Rented from Party Palace for a hundred and forty quid a day, which frankly is highway robbery." "You'd know." "I would." Bill sat back, pleased. "Now. Presents get stacked here, on the trestle table, under the banner. Nobody opens them till cake. That's our window." They were in the back of a transit van parked outside number forty-two Bellweather Crescent, which belonged to a woman named Deborah who was, according to the neighbourhood's very loud grapevine, throwing her daughter Poppy a seventh birthday party with a magician, a petting zoo, and a chocolate fountain. Molly had scouted it twice. The chocolate fountain was the only part she resented having to leave behind. She studied the placemat with the grim patience of a woman who had once done six weeks in Holloway because Bill got peckish during a jewellery job and left a half-eaten Cornish pasty on a display case. "Guest list?" "Twenty-two children. Nine adults, six of whom will be drinking prosecco out of paper cups by eleven-fifteen, so really we're looking at three functional adults, and one of those is the magician, and magicians are cowards." "That's a stereotype." "It's a pattern I've observed." Molly circled the side gate. The side gate was the plan. The side gate was always the plan; in her professional experience, ninety percent of British domestic security was a latch and a hopeful attitude. She'd go over at 12:40, when the magician began the finale and every child in the garden turned to face the little folding table like sunflowers. Bill would bring the van around. Ninety seconds, in and out, and by one o'clock the presents would be in a lock-up in Tottenham while twenty-two children learned an important lesson about the fundamental cruelty of the universe. Bill was quiet for a moment, which was unusual and therefore ominous. "It's just," he said. "They're kids." "They're consumers." "Poppy's turning seven." "Poppy," said Molly, "is getting an iPad, a Nintendo, and something called a Hatchimal, which retails at forty-nine ninety-nine and screams. I'm doing her mother a favour." "You've got no soul." "I've got a mortgage. Same thing, worse interest." He grumbled, but he folded the placemat into his jacket, and Molly knew that was that, because Bill had never in eleven years talked himself out of anything except a diet. Outside, faintly, a bicycle bell rang. A dog barked. Somewhere over the fence, an inflatable castle inflated with a long asthmatic wheeze, rising up like a monument to everything Molly had never had. She checked her watch. "Balaclavas?" "Left them at Mum's." "Bill." "I brought party hats," he said, brightening. "Camouflage." Molly closed her eyes. It was, infuriatingly, better than balaclavas.