What would you do if you found a dead body? Call the police? Check for a pulse? Flag down a passer-by for help, tearful but responsible, gulping in air? You might imagine yourself with a blanket round your shoulders, cradling a mug of hot sweet tea, helpfully giving statements to uniformed officers. Being interviewed in the local paper sometime later. Such a terrible shock. Their poor family.

You probably wouldn’t do what I did, on that bright cold morning when I emerged from the trees into the clearing, Brandy already beginning to tense and whine on her lead – dogs know, they always know. When I spotted it, at first I thought someone had dropped a coat while out on a morning run. Then I saw the white hand, turned upwards among dead leaves, the fingers curling in towards the palm, the wedding ring gleaming on the fourth finger.

I stood there for a moment. It was just after 7.30 a.m. The forest was quiet all around me, only the calls of birds and the rustle of the breeze in the trees, barely light yet, no one else nearby – or so I thought at the time. I didn’t even let myself think, This is a dead body. I didn’t call the police or raise the alarm or do any of the things you’re supposed to do. Only one thought was in my head: Get out of here. Don’t let them catch you. Run.

And so I did, Brandy yelping behind me as I tugged on her lead. I turned out of the clearing and ran back down the path and out of the woods and across the green and up the garden path to my cottage, where I fumbled the lock, opened and shut the door, and dropped the lead with shaking hands. Then I sank down on the sofa, without even taking off my walking boots. What I had forgotten most of all was how quiet a crime scene is. No breath but yours. The faint breeze that stirs over lifeless hair and clothes. The glassy, open emptiness of dead eyes. It’s almost peaceful, a violent death, before they come in with heavy boots and tape and cameras. Before it becomes a story, out there in the world for people to read. Before it’s something that happened to you.

But no, it wasn’t real, it didn’t happen. I hadn’t seen it. Nothing was there. Still I didn’t call the police or tell anyone, never mind go back to check if they were still alive – I didn’t want to think about any of that. In fact, I did nothing at all. This might seem crazy to you, irresponsible, indefensible. But you don’t know what you’d do, if it wasn’t the first dead body you had found.