A rock and a hard place.

That's where Ashleigh was. Because on one hand, she had two dangerous looking men to serve. And on the other, if she walked away, she'd be going against the rules. Service with a smile. If she got written up again, she'd be on her final warning.

Which was worse?

She knew she'd have to go up to them, because although this was self checkout, they had a knife. Anything like that needed authorising. She did it a million times a day. But this time, she didn't want to.

One was tall, lithe, ethereal. He looked barely of this world. The patched cape didn't help. The other was very worldly, as in, he seemed made of one of the slag heaps just outside the shop. His dark trousers and jacket crammed full to bursting of lifeless rubbish. Somewhere in his eyes, deep beyond, a working mind may have lurked. Both stank of death.

Ashleigh served drug addicts every day. It was part of the job. And always with a smile. Usually, they wouldn't hurt her, wouldn't even say a word. Because why would they? They didn't want to draw attention to themselves, particularly if they had bottles stuffed in their coats or knickers. But these two were different. No booze, no pills, nothing. Just the knife. A knife in its edgeless plastic packaging, alright, but still something that could kill. And they were waiting for her. While the tall one scanned it through, slowly and delicately, the fat one just stood and watched her. One twitch of his dark moustache was the only movement he'd made for the ten seconds since the light had come on above the machine to tell her to approach.

Decision time. She made the wrong one.

Maybe because it was five minutes before the end of her shift, and she was already thinking of bed. Or maybe because the security desk was only a sprint away. And somewhere a little further, in aisle four, her boyfriend was choosing his beers for the night, looking for the strongest one. Whatever it was, her feet became unstuck, quite literally, from the grimy tiles, and she walked over.

The fat one was still deathly still. The tall one had just finished placing the knife carefully in the bagging area.

"Good evening," Ashleigh said, and as she did, she flashed her most professional smile, and as she did that, the tall ghostly one whirled round and punched her hard in the mouth.

People screamed. A tin of peas came rolling to a rest against Ashleigh's foot. The foot was covered in splattered blood. Her blood. Her ears swelled with the rushing of a wave. Her mouth felt numb and wracked with pain all at once. She put her hands up, much, much too late, and coughed out a sobbing plea for it all to stop. But it had already stopped, because the fat one was gone, slowly waddling off towards the exit, and through the tears, she could see the pale one crouched before her, not even looking at her. His slender hands were out in front of him as he slid them through the blood. Smeared crimson swirled across the off-white of the tiles.

"Someone call the police!" a voice she thought she recognised shouted above the screams.

"Stop him!" another one called. Someone pushed past, after the fat one, who wasn't exactly hurrying.

The man before her was rising now. He'd found what he was looking for. He held it aloft, proudly, between forefinger and thumb, for just a moment, a fleck of gleaming white, and with the insane clear calm only someone who's just been attacked can muster, Ashleigh thought, That's my tooth.

The man with the tooth was halfway across the lobby now, leaving behind only a lukewarm cloud of filth. Somehow, no one had caught up with the big one, though he seemed only to be ambling, and the few brave shoppers giving pursuit were running. And then, the two men were side by side, and almost away, and security was nowhere to be seen, and suddenly the pain was all too much, and Ashleigh slumped against the bagging station, and through the pulsing red behind her eyes she saw they'd left the knife on the platform where they had watched her and waited for her. The glare of the screen telling them to pay eighteen pounds prickled meaninglessly at her brain.

Then there was another voice above the rest, and this time she knew it, and the voice boomed, "You fucking bastards!", and then she was being hauled roughly to a standing position and marched, dizzy and stumbling, towards the pools of yellow light in the car park.

"Will someone just call the police!" demanded an old woman in a raincoat by the baskets. She wasn't calling the police either.

Outside, in the cool September evening of the car park, no one had tried to stop the retreating men. The people here hadn't seen what the pair had just done, and disgusted glances were the only obstacles they set in their way. But when Ashleigh passed, dripping blood as she went, they sprawled from her as if she were the attacker. Jon was already ten steps ahead of her, bubbling with rage. He bellowed out an inarticulate fury of expletives as the men reached a rusted Vauxhall in the second row and pulled away.

He reached their car and whirled, almost as much anger directed at his girlfriend as the thugs. "Won't you hurry up?" he roared.

Ashleigh would have stopped if Jon hadn't grabbed her by the arm and yanked her into her seat. "I-"

The car was already moving as she shut the door. With a scream of rubber, they were off. Ashleigh's head almost bounced off the dashboard. Everything was pulsing in and out of focus. And the pain was all consuming. She hadn't dared lick her teeth yet.

A moment of uneasy silence. And then Jon growled, "Why did you let them do that to you?"

Ashleigh tried to turn her head, to explain the rock and the hard place, to justify what had happened to her. And decided against it. Not just because of the pain, but because Jon was angry. It wasn't at her. It was them, she knew. He was being protective.

"Jesus," he said, as they roared down the dual carriageway they'd somehow turned onto. "Look at the state of that. We'll have to clean all this up in the morning." He tossed one hand over the pool of blood dripping down Ashleigh's blouse, pooling round her trousers, soaking into the grey fabric of her seat.

He was being protective.

"It hurts," she choked out through her mangled lips. "Just get me to hospital."

It took a while for the sound to make sense through the blanket of shock. And even then, she didn't believe it.

"Hospital?" Jon snapped when he'd stopped laughing. He jabbed out towards the windscreen, where ahead, straddling the two lanes of the open road, the black Vauxhall careened around the next bend. "They're not going to need a hospital once we get them. They're going straight to the fucking morgue." And he pressed his foot down on the pedal a little harder.

* * *

They went from the bypass to main road to street to driveway, and the world grew darker, both outside and in Ashleigh's head. She wondered how much of the drive was real. It was only five minutes later, so they still had to be in town. But, as they pursued the men deeper into the estate, there were less and less streetlights, less shops, less people. All the variety of smells and sights and colour that melded to make the tapestry of daily existence was stripped away. Only the cold monotony of terraced rows of houses, dull and grey and unmoving as far as the eye could see, remained of the place they'd lived all their lives.

Jon had pulled up an inch from the rear of the ancient car, trapping it on the paved path that separated the house from the others. It was the only one set apart from the other residences, but it was just as blank, just as dead. No lights in the windows. No sign of the attackers.

Ashleigh let out a little moan as Jon forced open his door. It was agony and it was fear and mainly it was the unshakeable, certain sense that a greater doom still awaited them this night. She should be in A&E by now, under white lights, swaddled in bandages. But instead she was watching Jon peer through the grime of first the Vauxhall's windows, then the curtainless counterparts of the living room by the front door of the house. Beyond the ringing in her aching ears, she heard nothing. The silence of the morgue Jon had promised them.

Had anyone called the police? she wondered. Her own mobile was still in her locker. Suddenly, through the numbness, the stabbing realisation that she'd not clocked out.

Jon was huffing and puffing like a wolf about to blow a pig's house down. Rolling his shoulders, smacking his jaw with hands the size of hams. Nothing in his eyes. "I'm fucking going in," he snarled under his breath. He took a trot back, against the driver side door, and for the second time that night, Ashleigh made the decision to approach. Because there was no stopping him now that he'd got going, and she wasn't going to try, and he was going to go straight through that front door shoulder-first if she didn't do anything. So out she got, wincing at the cold air against her face, shuffled up the path, and tried the door. It opened with hardly a creak. She was helpless to stop whatever was about to happen. All she had the power to do was save him his own pain.

Like a bull, he barrelled in past her. He wasn't just a wolf; he was a werewolf. He'd swelled in size, it seemed, in his quest for revenge. His shoulders hardly seemed to fit through the hall, tracksuit scraping either side as he forced himself inward. With a squeak, and a gob of blood on the doorstep, she followed, meekly, not calling his name, because there was no point. She could only witness what there was to be witnessed.

The corridor reeked of damp. The walls hadn't been painted in decades; deep gouges marked the trail through the dust. Lopsided doors stood at either side, open maws to languid darkness. But Ashleigh spared these ways mere moments; Jon was up ahead somewhere, gathering pace, cursing, inciting, raging. He'd obviously heard a noise deeper in the house, and he was closing in on those who had wronged him. Ashleigh picked up the pace, brushing through the whorls of plaster that still hung in the moist air from her boyfriend's passage.

In the blackness ahead, there was all at once a blazing glare of light.

Jon was framed within the white, silhouette of raised arm frozen mid-strike, a battle-cry choking in his throat. Ashleigh moved to his side, peered into the beyond.

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It was archaic and it was comfortable and it was warm. Thick brown carpet and heavy blackout curtains muffled the chill. There were rocking chairs and gas lights and tea services and trinkets all jumbled about the edges of the space, as if cast hurriedly aside for what lay in the middle. The two men stood on either side of a polished mahogany table, the fat one half-turned to look at the intruder who had just swung wide the door. One arm was outstretched, hand extended from yellowed shirtsleeve, palm outward, casually stopping Jon in his tracks with an easy confidence that spoke not of defence, but of preventing the disruption of a momentous event. He looked altogether more right here in this place than under the scrutinising illuminations of the supermarket. She couldn't even smell him here. Somehow, the shop, and the life that she knew, seemed now very much beneath him.

The thin one had removed his faded cape, which was folded neatly on the back of a chair next to the table. He had rolled up his own shirtsleeves, was bent down in a half-crouch by a collection of floral dishes upon which lay an assortment of powders and liquids that Ashleigh sensed were not narcotics, but something altogether more subtle. The man's face was older than what she'd thought she'd seen in the brief impression she'd had before his fist connected with her mouth. There wasn't a wrinkle or crease on it; more, it seemed like a piece of cloth stretched taut over a skull. At first, she thought there was no expression on that face, but she came quickly to realise it was one of uncomprehending awe.

On the table, right in the middle, on a brass pedestal, there stood an urn.

It was crude, twisted, cracked, uneven. And it was beautiful.

The fat man by Jon lowered his hand, and gazed lovingly back towards the table. "You may enter," he said, his voice no more than a papery whisper. "Come and watch the master complete his work."

Jon's gaze was transfixed by what was on the table. His arm dropped to his side. He took a step closer.

"Let's get out of here," Ashleigh whimpered, and her breath was like a volley of needles upon the bleeding stump of her tooth.

The large man eased himself behind Jon, stuffed a blotchy hand into his enormous trousers, and drew forth a pristine embroidered handkerchief, which he offered to the woman before him. Ashleigh considered a moment, then she snatched it from his grasp and pressed it to her bulging mouth.

In the crouching man's hand there had appeared a tiny, delicate paintbrush. Slowly, deliberately, he dipped its tip into a vial of creamy dew on the edge of the table, then eased it beside a chipped pestle and into the mortar by his elbow. A course white powder peppered the bristles momentarily before he lowered them for a moment into a clear solvent, into which the granules dissolved. Then, with great care, he studied the urn for a moment before leaning closer and dabbing at its crooked facets with the paint. Ashleigh, Jon and the fat man watched as the pot began to sparkle and shine under the flicker of the lamp above.

"Minoan White," whispered the bystander reverently, as if careful not to awaken a slumbering god. "The rarest of the rare, purer than a thousand virgins. It is perfection itself."

It was. They watched until the urn was evenly coated, until it seemed to be the source of light itself. The only sound was Jon's violent huffing breath, and even that slowed and mellowed to silence as the work neared it's climax. The painter never said a word.

"How much?" said Jon. It could have been five minutes or five hours later. Ashleigh thought she might have been asleep. The pain was certainly ebbing, at least, but now a new hurt rose sharply to take its place.

"Jon!" she cried. "It's got my tooth in it!" She hadn't known that she knew it until that point, couldn't have known really, but somehow, she did. This is what it had all been for. Minoan White.

The man by their side looked wary. "This... was intended for a private buyer. I don't know..."

"How much?!" Jon spat. The venom was rising again in his tone, the pressure building. "You've ruined my girl, so you owe me one. So, how much?"

Despite his girth, the man looked very small compared to Jon. His moustache began to tremble. A single bead of sweat trickled from the grease of his hair down the side of his stained collar.

"Jon!" Ashleigh shrieked.

No one saw the artist move. But he had put down his brush, and tidied away his pigments, and now he was across the table, gliding towards Jon's ear. Ashleigh saw his jaw move as he gave his price. The fat man, flustered, crossed the room in three thumping steps and sat heavily in one of the chairs. All at once, the smell of decay again clawed at Ashleigh's nostrils.

Jon did nothing at first. Then, he turned and took one quick glance at his girlfriend, huddled incredulous in the corner, and then back to the urn. Ashleigh didn't like what was in either look.

Then, his hand was in his pocket, and he was taking out a thick wad of notes from his wallet, and pressing most of it into the waiting hand of the silent painter, and with the urn scooped under one arm and Ashleigh's wilting frame under the other, they were back out into the biting air and then into the choking heat of the car and out of the drive and out of the street and off the main road and onto the motorway away and home and done.

* * *

It took three trips to the dentist and two weeks off work to extract the daggers of enamel from her swollen gum, to patch things up, to make it look bearable if only she kept her lips closed. Jon told her that if she got up off her arse and put some extra hours in, one day she might be able to afford to get it fixed properly. Jon could barely bring himself to look at her any more. When he did, it was with the expression you might give a mud-caked dog that had been told not to jump in the river and that had done it anyway.

"This is what happens when you go slinking off talking to other men," he snarled one night. It was two hours after her first shift back. Three hours since she'd come out of the customer toilets, flushed from the first panic attack of her life. Five cans that had once been filled with discount lager lay crumpled on the footstool. The match on the telly was entering its eighty-fifth minute. That was why she'd had to get the taxi home, endured the next round of concerned intrusions from the driver. There were complications, the doctor had told her. The swelling should have been going down now.

He said something else, under his stale breath, but it was too slurred to hear properly. It might have been skank. Ashleigh put down her microwaved curry and watched as a crowd of braying lads in red shirts lifted a trophy.

Five shifts later, Ashleigh asked to move to an office role. She couldn't stand all the eyes on her, she told the manager, trying not to cry. And every time the flashing light went off, every time she saw a turned back, or a wink of steel, she felt the jolt as her head snapped back all over again. She felt fear. She felt shame. The manager told her it simply wasn't possible. She walked back to the shop floor, pulled out an inch of greasy till roll, and wrote out her notice with a shivering pencil.

Jon didn't even notice that she wasn't going out any more. He wasn't there. More and more, he would disappear for hours and nights, more gym work, he said, and came back reeking of perfume. He was certainly getting his exercise.

And if he wasn't out, he was in the spare room, hand on the pool table, looking at the urn.

It was still there. In her house. It was like Ashleigh could see through walls. She felt its heavy weight pressing through her existence, scraping its sandpaper curves against her across rooms, prickling her skin. And if Jon wasn't out at the gym or out at the club or in front of the TV avoiding her gaze, he was glaring at it. Sometimes, he'd pull out his phone and take pictures, a new angle each day. Other times, he'd pull up a chair instead, his blank slab of face slack, staring into its surface. Into the white, the Minoan White.

Once, his head swung round as she paused by the half-open door, caught her peeking. He rose. And for a moment, just a moment, his hand came up towards her. She flinched away, got back to the cleaning that was never finished. But before she turned, she saw his hand was still curled into a fist, unmoving, considering. She saw that fist a lot more after that. It looked hungry.

* * *

Jon had a love-hate relationship with the urn. Some days, he told her that it was the prettiest thing he'd ever owned, after what she'd gotten herself into, and that it was going on her dressing table in the bedroom. He'd wait with his uncurled hand on its gnarled lacquer, fingers idly stroking its flaws, until all the colour had drained from her face. Then he'd laugh and turn away and go back to his worship, and it never moved, because if it went out of the games room then he'd have to look at it and Ashleigh at the same time, and it just wouldn't be the same.

And then, at odd hours, she would hear him roaring at it, telling it how shit it was, that he'd been robbed blind. That he couldn't have such a piece of crap in his house any longer. That it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen, and that was saying something, because all art was pointless. And one night, the final night, as he was pushing her onto the bed with one arm and shoving into her knickers with the other , he told her it was going. All the pictures he'd been taking had finally paid off, and some bent snob had taken a liking to it, and it was getting collected in the morning, and that she better put it out in the yard at nine because he wasn't having gays inside. It was worth the wait, he breathed, yanking off her bra and twisting painfully at her nipples, because he was getting triple what he'd forked out for it. What was he going to do with the money, she asked, for something to say, so that she wouldn't cry out as his cock pushed at her legs. A holiday, he grunted, as he finally forced his way in. With the boys. Lanzarote. August. His hand reached out, fumbling to the side of the bed. She shut her eyes. The coolness of the pillowcase was soothing as he draped it across her face.

* * *

It was good to be rid of it.

She could hardly lift it at first, not until she got a hand under the base. She tried not to look too hard at it as she tiptoed past the snoring in the bedroom. She wasn't afraid of the memories it might swirl up. She was frightened she would like it.

When she finally set it down, panting, on the grass, she poked one disbelieving finger at the gleaming white, trying to believe she could sense herself in its shine. Then she forced her gaze away, and waited.

The man who came for it was a real gentleman. She helped him haul it into the van, and then they stayed on the pavement for a while, chatting about the Miro exhibition at the gallery in town. She only said she had to be going when it occurred to her that the time that had passed without inviting the poor sod in for a cup of tea made her seem rude.

Before he left, the art dealer pointed gently at her upper jaw, smiled, said he hoped she was better soon. She smiled back. She didn't feel like an exhibit this time. Up above, the sun was shining.

Inside, Jon was still snoring. Let sleeping dogs lie. Carefully, she opened the cupboard door under the stairs. She slipped a hand into the handbag that hadn't been out of there in years. She retrieved the business card that the fat man had pressed into her hand that night as Jon had torn from the room. It had lived in an inner pocket here, safe and snug, ever since.

She went into the back yard, and made a couple of phone calls. Then she put on her nicest summer dress, dabbed makeup on the bruise until you could hardly see it. She looked tentatively in the bathroom mirror, and saw that she was gorgeous. The taxi came ten minutes later. She didn't lock the front door.

She hadn't seen the girls in months. They had scampi and red wine. Lots of it. And when she came back, Jon wasn't there.

* * *

She'd been alone for ten days when Jon came back.

She'd been a busy woman. There were interviews at not one but two dream jobs. She had enrolled at the gym, something she had been meaning to do for ages. Not that sweaty testosterone-soaked fight club that she'd so hated him going to, but the lovely modern one on the retail park. And she'd tracked down that dealer, seen the Miros, seen the bottom of a few cocktails too. Smiled some smiles. She didn't think he was gay.

And best of all, the nights in with the girls, the flicking through the travel sites, finally planning that getaway in the sun that weddings and babies and breakups and life had been getting in the way of all this time. It was still a little up in the air, and they all had different ideas of paradise. She'd vetoed Spain. Personally, she fancied somewhere in Greece. And she didn't even have to feel guilty about going any more. She had a little money put away for it now.

Jon came back on a Wednesday, at six in the morning. It wasn't a surprise. She'd arranged it all. She didn't want to see him at first, wasn't sure if she was up to it, so she'd left the door unlocked the night before, just like when he'd left. Her alarm woke her at five to. She knew he was already in. She could feel him.

She hadn't known how she would take it when the day came. But now it had come to it, she felt fantastic.

She sprung out of bed and raced downstairs. She avoided the living room at first, dived into the kitchen. With trembling hands, she poured herself half a glass of champagne, like she used to do on a Christmas morning. It was a special day.

Then, she took a deep breath and went in.

He was alone, like she'd asked. She hadn't wanted to run into them. He was under a delicate cloth, on the TV stand, just where he'd have wanted to be if she hadn't thrown out that piece of rubbish. Pinned to the cloth was a note, painted out in a flourish of black ink upon a thick strip of finest cream writing paper.

Made with finest Cretian Vermilion.

Underneath the cloth, there was a masterpiece.