Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCR3HTBKR87XWT5JK7KVPC1

The blueprints were drawn on the back of a pizza box, which Bill considered a professional touch. "Bouncy castle here," he said, tapping grease-stained cardboard with a pencil. "Trestle table of sandwiches here. And the presents, Molly, the presents are stacked in the conservatory like ingots in a vault." "How many?" "Forty-one. I counted them through the hedge while pretending to be a man looking for his dog." "Do you have a dog?" "I have a lead," said Bill. "A lead implies a dog. That's misdirection." Molly leaned back in the deckchair and considered the ceiling of the lock-up, where a strip light flickered with what she felt was appropriate menace. She had done banks. She had done a jeweller's in Antwerp with a man named Klaus who wept during the getaway. She had never done a seventh birthday party. "Security?" "Fourteen children, four adults, one grandmother who I'm told does not sit down." "And the mother?" "Deborah." Bill said the name the way other men say *Interpol*. "Deborah has a laminated schedule. Games at two. Cake at half past. She will notice if a single sausage roll goes missing, never mind forty-one presents." "Then we go during the entertainer." "Explain." "Magician arrives at two-fifteen. Lights down, curtains shut, everyone facing the same direction for twenty-five minutes." Molly sat forward. "Every adult in that house will be standing at the back with a glass of warm Prosecco, thinking about their mortgage. Nobody looks at a conservatory during a magic show. Nobody looks at anything." Bill's pencil hovered. "That's beautiful." "It's basic crowd psychology." "It's *beautiful*, Molly, don't spoil it." He wrote MAGICIAN in capitals and underlined it twice. "What's my role?" "You're the uncle." "Which uncle?" "Every party has an uncle nobody can place. Stands by the crisps. Asks children how school is going. Nobody challenges the uncle because everyone assumes he belongs to somebody else." "I'll need a fleece." "You'll need a fleece and a card with a tenner in it, in case someone hands you the birthday girl." "And you?" "Caterer." Molly produced a hi-vis tabard and a large flat box. "I arrive at two-ten with an unrequested platter of vol-au-vents. Deborah will hate them, but she won't turn them away, because turning away food in front of other mothers is social suicide. That gets me a door propped open and a legitimate reason to be carrying a large empty box out of the house." Bill was quiet for a moment. "There's an ethical dimension here I want to raise." "Go on." "They're children's presents." "They're forty-one unopened items, average retail forty quid, of which thirty are duplicates and eleven are educational." Molly shrugged. "We're preventing disappointment. We're a service." "And the birthday girl?" "We leave her the pony one. I'm not a monster." She folded the tabard with a bank clerk's precision. "Two o'clock, Bill. Fleece. Crisps. Look bored." "I *am* bored," said Bill. "That's why I said yes." "Good," said Molly, switching off the flickering light. "Boredom's the best disguise there is."