Though you hate to admit it, you were crying about Louise, and you'd sworn to yourself that you wouldn't cry over her. Not one single tear.

From upstairs you can hear walking about, serving customers, and he's got that record on, and it's that song, the one you and he like to play over and over and over until it drives the other staff mad. She's mine...

It was while you were washing pots that you suddenly had the thought - maybe I was wrong... And for some reason this was what finally made you cry, after three weeks and two days of not-crying. The last time you cried was three weeks and four days ago when you accidentally put your foot through your beautiful Spanish guitar that you've had since you were sixteen.

You cried a lot. You considered phoning her to tell her about it, but you decided not to. You were starting to get the impression she was avoiding you. Two days later you couldn't stand it any more and you called her. You never got around to telling her about the death of your guitar.

I'm sorry I haven't been in touch lately, but I've Met Someone she said.

That familiar leaden, cold feeling in your stomach.

Oh, uh, that's good you said. What's she like?

Oh she's amazing - she's the nicest person I've ever met. She has a Phd.

Yeah?

Yeah - in D.H. Lawrence.

And you said That's great, that's really, uh, great and stuff like that, and you were so nice about it.

...the nicest person I've ever met...

It won't last, you told yourself.

And then you couldn't stand the ridiculous pathos of it - you sitting on the grotty stairs of the grotty subterranean kitchen of in your filthy, batter-smeared pakora T-shirt, and your black woolly hat that's supposed to keep the frying grease out of your hair, and your batter-spattered jeans that are way too big for you now because you lost so much weight since you broke up with Alison, and your knackered red gym shoes that your dad bought you three years ago for the purpose of going swimming in his river. Lot of broken glass on the river bed. They cost £6, the gym shoes - he got them in Tesco's.

You sitting there with your head in your hands crying over Louise who went off with a woman who has a Phd in D.H. Lawrence. D.H. Lawrence! It's just too ridiculous - the ridiculousness of it all caved in on you and you jumped to your feet, wiping the tears away on a cleanish patch of T-shirt, and finished clearing up.

You even laughed at your pitiful reflection in the big oval mirror, which strangely hangs in the corner of the kitchen by the stairs. Like you really want to know what you look like when you're covered in pakora batter and greasey to the bone and you've hardly slept for weeks because you have these two other jobs as well, and one of them starts at 5.00 in the morning, and you've been running around all the time trying to forget about the things that hurt. Louise... You notice that you've managed to smear pakora batter all across your right ear.

D.H. Lawrence! God! You've always hated D.H. Lawrence, and now you hate him double. You hate him with a venom you ordinarily only reserve for tabloid journalists and evangelical Christians. If he wasn't already dead you would definitely make plans to murder him. You keep remembering how you were forced to read 'Women in Love' for 'A' level English Lit. The thought makes you sick. You've considered attempting to find out where D.H. Lawrence is buried, and going there and desecrating his grave.

She's mine, she's mine, she is mi-i-ine...

And this is how you like to think things are, even though you don't believe in the concept of ownership between people, because that's slavery isn't it, and everyone should be free. Still you like to think she's mine, even if there is in fact zero evidence to support this idea. She's mine, you think, even if she doesn't actually realise it, even if she completely ignores you and thinks she's madly in love with the woman who has a Phd in D.H. Lawrence. In spite of this, and in spite of the fact that you don't have a Phd in anything, and are just some scruffy, moneyless, awkward, overgrown ragamuffin child who earns her living by cutting up newspapers, frying pakoras and posing naked for art students, and in spite of the fact that you may be a little crazed at times and give yourself away too much, write derranged letters and say all the wrong things, like when you told her you couldn't have a relationship with her because it was too soon after Alison and anyway you wanted to be free and couldn't possibly make any kind of real committment. You told her you really wanted to be friends, and then you kissed her and it was so good you felt dizzy and light-headed and disorientated, and you wanted to laugh and cry and jump up and down and sing, but instead you just said, Well, see ya and walked away. Louise... In spite of all this you still like to think she's mine...

And then while you were scrubbing burnt curry off the bottom of a pot you though - maybe I was wrong... The disastrousness of this possibility has various aspects. Firstly you hate to be wrong about anything, but most especially you hate to be wrong about people. You were so arrogantly certain that you were right - your belief was so pure and single-minded. There was never a single moment of doubt from the second you looked in her eyes and knew. Or thought you knew. You almost wish you'd never done that - never looked in her eyes and had that feeling, that beautiful, electric, unstoppable feeling. Louise... You almost wish you'd just looked at some point slightly below her chin or slightly left of her left ear, like you always used to do with every person you ever met for years and years. Then you could've avoided all this nasty emotional mess. You've got this big hang-up about eye contact, but lately you're trying to overcome it. And look where it's got you...

But it's just too bad, you did look in her eyes and you did have that feeling, and you were sure that it was merely a question of getting her to see the truth, somehow or other. The truth of the amazing, shining Possibility of her-and-you. When this proved to be slightly more tricky than you had at first anticipated, you never wavered in your conviction. Even when all the signs, or most of them, were wrong, you still believed that eventually It was inevitable, you thought. You Had Faith.

Secondly, it's a truly terrible thing to lose your Faith. It's a terrible thing to look back and realise how utterly deluded you've been, see the waste of all that misdirected passion and energy and belief, all of it flowing out into empty space.

You've got this friend, Elaine, who became a nun at eighteen, straight from school. She went into a silent, closed order and stayed there for nine years. Then she lost her Faith and left. She had to get permission from the Pope - it was a really big deal. You're fascinated by this story and you ask Elaine endless questions about it. Elaine's now in her fifties and is a happy atheist. She told you that her loss of Faith was almost painless, like a snake shedding its skin. It was just something that she had out-grown and no longer needed. She told you that she has no regrets about any of it. You wonder if this can really be true. Elaine is a very remarkable person.

But didn't you get really lonely? you asked once. Elaine told you how she just prayed all the time, talked to God in her head every waking minute of the day. Of course you didn't realise, at the time, that you were just talking to yourself...

When Elaine said that it struck you as hilariously funny, but underneath the funnyness it was really sad.

You thought - maybe I was wrong about Louise... But somehow you don't quite believe it - you haven't quite let go of your Faith. You start to whistle as you carry your trays of pakoras up the stairs to the shop. She's mine... You can't help it - you're an optimist

Tat is 32 years old, live in East London and work as an adult literacy teacher. I've been writing as an obsessive sort of hobby for many years, and at the moment I have most of my ideas for stories when I'm riding my bike through Walthamstow.