Run: 2026-09-23-01M37NSHYQATRTWKGM1AAFH3WG

The van smelled of old chips and ambition. Molly spread the blueprints across the dashboard, weighting one corner with a thermos and the other with Bill's elbow, which he had not offered but which she had taken anyway. The blueprints were, strictly speaking, a birthday invitation. It was lilac, embossed with a unicorn, and it announced in glittering cursive that Tallulah Brackenridge was turning seven at 14 Willowmere Close, with a bouncy castle, a magician, and "LOTS of surprises!" Molly had circled the word LOTS three times in red pen. "Forty-two guests," she said. "Average spend of twenty pounds per present. That's eight hundred and forty quid of plastic, sitting on a trestle table, guarded by nobody." "Guarded by parents," Bill said. "Parents are not guards. Parents are exhausted people holding paper plates." Bill chewed his thumbnail. He was a large man with a small, anxious heart, and he had been a getaway driver for eleven years without once exceeding the speed limit. He considered this a professional point of pride. Molly considered it the reason they were broke. "What about the magician?" he asked. "Ah." Molly produced a flyer for The Great Gerald, Wizard of Wonders, Available for Weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. "Gerald is our inside man. Gerald doesn't know that yet." She explained the plan with the brisk confidence of someone who had explained many plans, most of which had ended in hedges. At three o'clock, Gerald would perform his famous Vanishing Rabbit. Every eye in the garden would turn to the hat. In that moment of collective wonder, Bill, dressed as a second clown, would wheel the presents out through the side gate in a laundry trolley. "Why am I a second clown?" "Because there's already a first clown." "Is he in on it?" "He's a children's entertainer named Pip, Bill. He's not in on anything. He's barely in on his own life." Bill looked down at the costume folded in his lap. The shoes were enormous. The nose had been pre-owned. He sighed the sigh of a man who had already agreed to something in his heart. "And if a kid asks me to make a balloon animal?" Molly paused. This, it was clear, had not been accounted for. Rain tapped against the windscreen like a disappointed accountant. "Can you make a balloon animal?" she asked. "I can make a snake." "Everyone can make a snake. That's just a balloon." "It's a snake if you believe in it." She rolled up the invitation, tucked it into her jacket, and swapped seats with him, because Bill was not permitted to drive while emotional. "Tomorrow at two," she said. "We go in as professionals. We come out as millionaires." "Eight hundred and forty quid isn't millions." "It's millions of joy, Bill," she said, and pulled away from the kerb at exactly the speed limit, out of respect.