I had been sitting in the tranquil tea gardens of Quarr Abbey. Blue, blue sky and the sun beating down. Hot.

I was with Della, a handsome looking woman in her way: thick curly dark hair; pale complexion; hazel eyes; neat features.

A couple of hours previously we had been fucking in my bed. I had savoured her naked body and ran my hands over her ivory flesh. I had sucked her ample breasts and penetrated her dark and thick black triangle. She had shivered when she had come - it was a response unique to her - and her legs were gripped between mine as I too climaxed. We had embraced for a while after. And then she had stated: "It smells of sex in here. I like that."

I had cooked her breakfast: bacon and eggs.

Easy like Sunday morning...

I had recalled the track in my head.

Easy…

Just sitting there on a rustic bench amongst the carefully tended greenery; the distant and muted roar of the traffic; the murmur of the other patrons; monks in their long robes, wearing enigmatic expressions, occasionally wandering past.

Easy…

"Do you think we could still be friends if we ever split up?’" she said.

"No." I’m blunt.

I speculated that maybe I could love Della.

Why did she say that?

Better to believe in a lie than nothing.

A phrase, a thought, unbidden, unforeseen had forced itself into my mind. An unwelcome intruder.

Better. To. Believe. In. A. Lie. Than. Nothing.

What did it mean? Was it a subconscious reaction to the trappings of religion that surrounded me? A warning not to be entranced by the illusion of religion.

We had continued to chat. The subject was changed.

We’d finished our drinks and had caught the bus back to Ryde. We then walked to Puckpool and had eaten brown bread prawn sandwiches at Dell’s Café casually observing the sun glinting off Spinnaker Tower across the Solent; people lounging on the golden sands and swimmers in the blue-green sea.

Better to believe in a lie than nothing.

Later I’d walked her back to the hovercraft terminal where I had waved to her on the craft as it slid off the slipway before turning and heading to Southsea its engines growling and a light spray of cool mist kicked up by its skirts momentarily drifting across the hoverport…

I’d thought of her back home across the sea still living with her husband in a dead loveless marriage, with me her little escape, her distraction. Near but so far.

Better to believe in a lie than nothing.

I’d made my way home.

Back in my flat I’d picked up a scrap of paper and a red marker pen. I clumsily scrawled in capital letters: BETTER TO BELIEVE IN A LIE THAN NOTHING. I’d then secured it to my fridge with a magnet.

Every day I’d pass it and see it.

What did it mean? What did it mean to me?

Truth is subjective.

I concluded that you can't believe in nothing; it's a paradox.

Without God life has no value. No. Without belief in God life has no value. But it is the value that is God, therefore value is God.

My mind was at peace, but not for long.

Better to believe in a lie than nothing.

It kept troubling me.

Della dumped me less than a year later - no real reasons.

Consider yourself a free agent, she had texted out of the blue one day.

I guessed that’s how middle-class people dumped each other.

Consider yourself a free agent.

Classy. Civilised. No histrionics. No mess.

I was a little sad but not heartbroken – I knew she didn’t love me – and what’s more I occasionally cheated on her.

But do you know what?

I could have loved her.

Nevertheless ‘Better to believe in a lie than nothing’ continued to bounce around my head from time to time till I realised one morning, a good few years later, that all it meant was that everything was a lie and ‘nothing’ was indeed nothing…