P left the house at quarter to nine to walk to the station. I left ten minutes later, and waited at the bus stop for my ride to work. In the distance, sirens wailed.

It was grey and misty when I woke up, and I couldn’t drag myself out of bed for another forty minutes. The duvet charmed me into half-sleep, listening to the radio and postponing the inevitable, slipping in and out of snoozing.

When I got outside eventually, the ground was wet from mist, which made the leaves slippery. The bus took ages to arrive, and when it did, I was first on.

We sailed down the road, and past our local pub before slowing in heavy traffic. The Thames was at its lowest, with plenty of foreshore exposed. Sometimes the tide is so high that the water spills over onto the towpath, and the benches on the bank, outside our local, are ankle-deep in murky river water. Other times, it’s so low that it looks like a pathetic brown trickle in the middle of a mudfield, and the rowers jostle for space in its narrow confines.

There on the patch of foreshore in front of the pub, where a week ago we watched fireworks dance above the river, a huddle of police and ambulancemen. A police boat anchored off the shore, police tape cordoning the towpath, fluttering in the autumn breeze.

The bus cruised past at a leisurely pace, and we all craned to see what was happening.

I texted P to tell him what I’d seen - very CSI, ever so Prime Suspect - so close to our home.

Later, we discover what’s happened.

BBC NEWS:Body found on banks of Thames
The body of a woman has been washed up on the banks of the Thames, in west London.

Police were called at 0840 GMT on Monday after a passer-by reported seeing the fully-clothed body on the foreshore close to Barnes Bridge.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said it was too early to say if the death was suspicious.

The area close to Barnes railway bridge has been sealed off.

Not any more, it’s not.

I passed it on the way home, and craned my neck to see if anything had been left behind.

Tonight, as last night, it’s just a towpath used by people walking their dogs and a black river lapping the bank.