Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCRNWGQF1DJ1Q27PA929S5T

The van smelled of stale crisps and moral compromise. Bill had parked it beneath a lime tree two doors down from number forty-two, where a bouquet of helium balloons strained at the gatepost like prisoners plotting an escape. Through the windscreen, Molly watched a woman in a linen sundress carry a tray of sausage rolls across the front lawn, and something in her chest tightened that she chose to identify as hunger. She unfolded the blueprint across the dashboard. It was not, strictly speaking, a blueprint. It was the back of a takeaway menu, annotated in three colours of biro, with a large red X where Bill had drawn what he insisted was a bouncy castle and what looked to Molly like a collapsed lung. "Right," she said. "Present table's here, by the patio doors. Twenty-two guests, average gift value fifteen quid, that's three hundred and thirty in the bag before we've broken a sweat." "Three hundred and thirty." Bill chewed this over along with a hunk of Twix. "That's less than the fine for the last one." "It's a volume business, Bill. Also there's a piñata." "We're not stealing a piñata." "We're stealing everything. That's the concept. It's a *heist*." Bill said nothing, which was his way of registering dissent, and looked instead at the bunting. Little triangular flags, hand-sewn, alternating dinosaurs and stars. Somebody's mother had sat up past midnight with a needle for that, and here they were, two adults with a stolen Transit and a plan drawn on a menu for the Golden Wok. Molly saw the look. She had known Bill for eleven years and had catalogued all forty of his silences. "Don't," she said. "I didn't say anything." "You did the thing with your jaw." "My jaw is where it lives. It has to be somewhere." She turned back to the house. A small boy in a cape sprinted past the window, pursued by two other small boys in inferior capes, and the entire building seemed to shudder with joy. Somewhere inside, a speaker was murdering a song about a shark. "The distraction," Molly said, tapping the menu, "is you. You go in as the entertainer. Bongo the Clown. They cancelled their clown." "How do you know they cancelled their clown?" "Because I rang and cancelled their clown." Bill absorbed this. Then he reached behind the seat and produced, with the fatalism of a man collecting his own death warrant, a red foam nose. "I can do six balloon animals," he admitted. "Dog. Other dog. Swan, which is also a dog. Sword." "Nobody's asking for your résumé." "I'm just saying I've got a skill set." "You've got a foam nose and a criminal record. Put it on." He put it on. It sat there on his face, absurd and somehow tender, and Molly looked away quickly because the alternative was feelings, and feelings had no line item in the budget. Out on the lawn, the woman in the sundress lit nine candles, and the singing began, ragged and enormous, and Bill's hand stopped halfway to the door handle.