Jakes stood up and looked towards the bridge in the direction from which it had come, a hundred yards from him. In the water he saw ripples, echoes of the disturbance, but there was no sound to disturb the distant rumble of the traffic. He turned his head-torch on and began to cycle up the gentle slope of the narrow road bridge until he got to the middle. In the distance were the faint brake lights and indicators of a vehicle turning right, exiting the lane that led from the bridge to the main road. Looking over the railings, he could see nothing in the water except a faint shadow, but the reflection from his head-torch dazzled any details.

Turning back towards the island, he saw a man walking towards him, silhouetted in the lights of a large two-storey houseboat. He was slim, with a long ponytail like frayed rope. Beyond him a woman was lit up in the doorway. ‘Did someone just jump in?’ she called.

‘I can’t see anyone,’ the man yelled back, then turned as he approached Jakes, his hand lifted to shield his eyes from the head-torch beam. ‘Was that you?’ the man asked. ‘Did you chuck something in?’

‘No. Not me. I just heard the noise and came to look. Maybe it was someone from a car.’ He pointed north towards Hampton Court Road. ‘I thought someone was going for a swim, but whoever it was hasn’t surfaced.’

‘Maybe that was the BMW that was parked here earlier with its stereo pounding out,’ the man said.

Jakes drew away from him, not wishing to be properly seen. He had learned not to approach others at night. People sometimes thought him strange, especially when they saw his eyes, afflicted by nystagmus. He was hard for some people to look at, he knew that. It wasn’t helped by his dark unruly hair and beard, often still spattered with plaster. Strangers had suspicions about him, he was aware of that, even though almost no one knew the awful truth.

He wanted people not to look at him, but at his work. The smooth, perfect finish, not the merest ripple, product of a steady swing of the forearm. Jakes could make a ceiling flatter than the Thames, a straight horizon in any dimension. An unconscious skill, honed over years. Other people had bad ideas about him. But then he had bad ideas about other people.

Bad ideas. Someone jumping in the water. And then not swimming a stroke. Not calling for help. Just ripples, disturbing the surface. Finally smoothed over by the flow of the Thames. Leaving one world and entering another. Insightful as ever, Nietzsche had once said: There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.