THE grieving partner of missing Julie Peters has spoken of her grief after her body was found in a canal.

Marie Ashton paid tribute to the woman she spent 23 years with, raising her children and sharing a life together.

Julie, 55, of Hamble Road in Haydon Wick, was found in a Gloucester canal on Thursday, nine days after she was last seen.

Marie, 57, said: “I’m absolutely devastated. It came out of the blue.

“She was a major part of my life and helped me to bring up my children, and it’s something I will never forget.

“She was part of my family, my wider family, my two sisters, my brother, my nieces and nephews.”

The couple spent the best part of a quarter of a century with one another, raising Marie’s twins Natalie and Robert, both 24.

They moved to Swindon from Gloucester seven-and-a-half years ago but Marie said Julie had recently become more withdrawn.

Julie was facing mounting financial problems and Marie, a housewife, says they had begun to grow apart from each other.

“She had been withdrawn at home.

“She was always like that. She couldn’t really cope with any problems,” said Marie.

She revealed Julie had been in a serious road accident two years ago, which had also hit her hard.

She said that, most recently, Julie had pretended to go to work.

She would leave for her job at Securistyle in Cheltenham but not attend and then return home at her normal time.

She left for work as usual on May 5 but instead drove to to Tuffley Crescent, in Gloucester, where her red Ford Ka was found.

The road was adjacent to Laburnum Road, where she and Marie used to live.

“At the end of the day she was struggling,” said Marie.

“She had good memories of Gloucester.

“That’s where we all grew up together.”

Gloucestershire Police discovered Julie’s body in the canal near Kaskelot Way, in the Monkmill Dock area shortly after midday on Thursday.

“On Thursday evening, when CID came around, they were in plain clothes, and I knew then, even before he said, they didn’t have very good news,” said Marie.

“They were going to search the docks.

“We used to go in the antiques centre over there quite a lot. There was a toy unit too, and we liked the toys.”

A Wiltshire Police spokesman said Julie’s death is not being treated as suspicious.

An inquest is due to be opened and Gloucestershire Police it is in the process of preparing a file for the coroner.