Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCRJW89ET613HQ8EFXBFEC0

The van smelled of cold pizza and desperation, which Bill maintained was the natural perfume of ambition. "Right," he said, unrolling a napkin across the dashboard. "Blueprints." Molly stared at it. "That's a napkin." "It's a napkin with a *plan* on it. Look. Bouncy castle here, buffet table here, and this X is where they pile the presents." "What's the brown smudge?" "Gravy. It's load-bearing, don't touch it." She picked up the napkin anyway, holding it at arm's length like something she'd found under a fridge. Outside, through the windscreen, number forty-two Ambrose Crescent was throbbing with the bass of a song about a shark family, and the front garden had been colonised by a herd of small people in party hats. "Bill. I want you to hear yourself say it out loud." "Say what?" "The plan. The whole thing. Out loud, in your own voice, like a grown man." He straightened his tie, which was a clip-on and slightly askew. "We enter posing as entertainers. You're the balloon artist. I'm the magician. During the cake segment — when all eyes are on the flaming confectionery — we load the gift table into two black sacks and exit via the side gate, which I have personally confirmed does not squeak." "Confirmed how?" "I oiled it at six this morning. A neighbour saw me and I told her I was from the council." "And she believed you?" "I was holding a clipboard, Molly. A clipboard is a badge you don't have to earn." Molly rubbed her eyes. "It's toys. It's a table of toys for a seven-year-old." "It's a table of *unopened, boxed, mint-condition* toys, and last year's haul from the Pemberton twins paid my rent for two months. There's a doll in there worth ninety quid. Ninety. For a doll that says four things." "What four things?" "'I love you,' 'Let's be friends,' 'I'm hungry,' and something I couldn't make out. Possibly Latin." She looked at the house again. A father in a novelty apron was chasing a boy who'd got hold of the hose. Somebody's grandmother was asleep in a deckchair with a paper crown slipping over one eye. "And the magic," Molly said. "You can do magic, can you." "I can do one trick." "One." "I can make a fifty-pence piece vanish." "Everyone can make a fifty-pence piece vanish. That's just having pockets." "It's *presentation*, and you're being negative." Bill reached into the back and produced two black sacks, folded with the tenderness of a man handling a flag at a funeral. "Balloons are in the glovebox. You do a dog, you do a sword, you do the long thin one that isn't anything, and we're out in eleven minutes." Molly took the balloons. She sat with them in her lap for a long moment, listening to the shark song loop for the fourth time, and something behind her eyes went soft and dangerous. "Fine," she said. "But if there's a piñata, I'm having the piñata." "The piñata's not part of the plan." "It is now, Bill. Write it on your gravy."