‘Well, Nick, what exactly do you want me to do?’ I picked up my shoulder bag from the floor, grimacing a little at the weight, wondering what the hell I carry round that can weigh so much, and pulled out my diary. ‘Cos I’m pretty busy at the moment. How often do you want me to come?’ The place certainly needed a damn good clean. The table I was leaning on felt ominously sticky and the lino floor was black in the corners with years of ingrained filth. ‘I haven’t seen the rest of the flat, but it’s obviously not large. I could probably blitz it in a—’

‘Clean flat?’ He frowned, puzzled. ‘I not want you to clean flat.’

‘Oh. Shopping?’

‘No. I want shopping, I phone Mr Singh at corner shop, he bring it round.’ He chuckled. ‘We drink tea, play chess. When he get back to shop, Mrs Singh she shout at him for being gone too long.’ He poured tea strong enough to trot a mouse across and pushed a mug towards me. ‘You want sugar?’

‘No!’ I cried, a little too hastily, watching in horror as he spooned repeatedly into his own mug. ‘Tell me, cos I’m curious,’ I pointed at an ancient washing machine with mangle attached. ‘Does that thing still work?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, it work, but is easier to use launderette, three doors down.’

‘Ah! So, what is it you want me to do?’

‘I show you. In minute. Drink tea.’

The interior of the shop was dark and smelt of the past, of ancient dust and polish like the smell of an old church. Something of the same silence too, all the clocks stopped long ago. Solid hulks of dark furniture blocked the way to the shop door. We’d come down the stairs from the flat and entered the shop from a door at the back, down a corridor and past a storeroom. I looked around, weaving my way cautiously between cases of stuffed birds and animals: dead feathers, dead fur, glass eyes staring at me. There were no dollies or fans here, no bright, pretty pieces of china, no bygone fripperies to lift the gloom, just cardboard boxes balanced everywhere, full of unidentifiable objects wrapped in newspaper. A stuffed owl glared.

‘See? Shop is all junk,’ Nick said happily. ‘I get rid. Come to storeroom out back. I show you.’ He led me back down the corridor and into a storeroom piled high with furniture: desks, stools, chairs and tables stacked crazily on top of one another. ‘I need your help.’

I gazed around me and then turned to look at him. ‘To do what, exactly?’

He chuckled and tapped the lid of a dark box like a small coffin on legs.

‘You know what is?’

‘A casket?’ I ventured.