Fictional characters: I keep trying to tell myself they are not real

I've been watching the BBC drama 'Five Days' this week. An hour-long episode was shown each evening, tracking five days (hence the name) in the course of a police investigation. It was all rather tense and dramatic, and I found myself getting particularly into it. I only started watching because the wireless router in my house has decided to stop working wirelessly, so I have to sit in my lounge to use the internet. I looked up from my laptop and morbid fascination sucked me in - a camera shot of blood running down the window of a train was at once both repulsive and compelling. Was the person who fell from the bridge into the path of the train pushed, or was it suicide? How was the abandonned baby linked to the case?

I finished watching the last episode on iPlayer this evening. I won't reveal what happened, but the ending left me sitting with my mouth open for several minutes. It was pretty intense.

However, as always when a series finishes, I feel a certain amount of sadness. Perhaps I become too involved in the lives of fictional characters, but having invested time in following these characters on screen, it saddens me that I can no longer see them. It's almost like losing friends. In my mind, I picture them standing there saying, "Hello? We're still here. Have you forgotten us? The programme might have ended but our lives carry on. Don't you want to know what happened next?"

Yes, I do want to know what happened next. I have so many questions - more than I had after the first episode! Does Laurie find another man? Is she happy? And her mother; how long does she have before dementia takes hold completely? What about Nusrat and Danny - do they ever get to adopt a child? Does baby Michael live a good life reunited with his immigrant father?

Of course they're not real people. I know that. But isn't it entirely natural to become attached to characters on the screen? I took a liking to one character in particular - Laurie, the police officer who is a strong woman in a male-dominated world, but with a vulnerable side. I want to see more of her. I want to know more about her. I can't simply accept that there is no rest of her life because she doesn't exist. I suspended my disbelief when I began watching, as one must when watching or reading about made-up events, and now I find I cannot un-suspend it.

One need only look at the online world of fanfiction to see how widespread unhealthy attachment to fictional characters is. Dissatisfied with the fate of a character, people take matters into their own hands and rewrite the ending. It's about gaining access to that imaginary world again, when the official writer has deserted it or moved it in a direction that you are unhappy with. Some people take it one step too far and write fiction about real people, but that's another matter entirely.

I myself was thrown into the very strange phenomena that is fanfiction after the season finale of Doctor Who. I mourned the loss of Donna, the temp from Chiswick who travelled with the Doctor and then had to forget everything. Until, that is, I found the simple but effective method of dealing with her fate that many people on the internet had chosen: change it! We didn't have to stand for the eventualities that Russell T Davies had created; we could find a million other alternatives and comfort ourselves by writing them down to share with others. Fanfiction is the ultimate geeky pleasure, and I love it. However, I was forced to acknowledge that my obsession had gone a little too far when I did a word count on my longest and favourite work of fanfiction - a fix-it, concerned with the elaborate reversal of Donna's fate - and found that I'd written 17,500 words. If only I could get that inspired when writing coursework.

No, I won't be indulging in writing fanfiction detailing what might have happened to Laurie. But in my head she will live on, and as far as I'm concerned she gets her happy ending. I am perfectly aware that I sound like a nutcase, but I'm proud to say it: I am too emotionally attached to creations of fiction masquerading as real people. I believe it was Lynn Truss, in her book 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves', who quoted someone as saying that they always seemed to become addicted to things that there is no support group for (in their case, it was semicolons). This is true of me. I should set up a group called Fictional Character Obsessors Anonymous. We mental people who care about forgotten fictional characters will unite, once and for all! Who wants to join?

...Uh, just me then.