Chapter One

Look, I know how this sounds. If someone told me they found a genie's lamp in a bin bag outside a charity shop in Brighton, I'd laugh in their face and then ask what they'd had to drink. But somewhere between sorting a box of someone's entire life into "keep" and "recycle" on a wet Friday night, I found a brass urn the size of a kettle, tarnished to the colour of an old penny, and my life stopped being ordinary.

I work at St. Jude's Hospice Shop on Trafalgar Street. "Work" is doing a lot of heavy lifting — I volunteer, mostly because Jean, the manager, lets me take home the broken toasters and the lamps with the dodgy wiring, and because it gets me out of the flat and away from my own student loan statements. Jean's a retired midwife with severe opinions and the kindest face in Sussex. She says I'm "a good girl with a martyr complex," which I think she means affectionately.

The box arrived that evening with a house clearance from somewhere up past the racecourse. House clearances are the best donations because they're not just old coats; they're whole lives, packed in bin bags by people who didn't know what to keep. This one had a set of keys on a dolphin keyring, about forty paperback thrillers with the spines broken, a framed photo of a dog, and at the very bottom, wrapped in an old tea towel like somebody had tried to protect it, the lamp.

Not a modern lamp. No plug, no cable, no shade. It was brass, shaped like a teapot that had been to the gym, with a curved spout like a bird's beak and a little lid with a flame-shaped finial on top. The metal was worn smooth in places, like it had been held a lot. It smelled of dust and something sweet.

"That's nice, that is," Jean said, coming over with a cup of tea. "Bit pagan for the shelf, but it'll go for a fiver."

"I'll give you three," I said.

She squinted at me. "Four, and I won't tell anyone you're a weirdo who buys other people's rubbish."

I paid four pounds and carried it home through the rain in a carrier bag.

Our flat's in Kemptown, top floor of a Regency terrace, with a sea view if you're prepared to lean out of …