Do you want the good news first or the bad news?

There was a strange atmosphere in the car when I got back in, clutching my A-level results. So much so that I think I opened a window to let it out. But it wouldn’t shift, like a bad smell on a country road, even when my mum and sister turned around and talked over each other.

“So?”
“How did you do?”

It was clear to me, in that moment, that they knew something I didn’t – and it wasn’t that I’d done average to above-average in my A-levels.

I read through my results in descending order, which led naturally to the bad news I was about to receive.

Mum explained that she’d been diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, a condition that she’d manage first with the kind of dialysis you do in a hospital, then at home in your lunch break, then plugged into a machine by your bedside overnight. Ultimately, she’d need the kind of dialysis only a true friend could provide – via a donated kidney.

She’d go on to do all those things with remarkably good humour: making friends in hospital, reading novels at lunchtime, holding court from her bedside. Her new kidney gave her a lease of life. Complications four years ago released her from it.

I think maybe I pictured all those things in the back of mum’s Nissan Primera. That’s why I didn’t celebrate passing my A-levels and getting into the university I wanted. And why, ever since, I receive good news with all the excitement of someone standing on a trapdoor over a snake pit.

We got two sets of results that day that would change the course of our lives. Mine put me on a path to university. Mum’s did too, funnily enough. A couple of years later, she retrained and qualified as a counsellor. She was happier than ever – helping others, helping herself find new motivation, academic curiosity, financial independence.

I hope one day she told her clients what I’m only learning now, writing this – that bad news, really, is only what you make of it.