There’s no easy way to say this. I’ve failed my exams. This isn’t the fake panic everyone used to indulge in after we came out of an A-level exam. It’s stone cold certainty. I messed up my last paper totally, and the other was – at best – borderline.

I should have told you last week, but like I say, I’m a coward. Which means every day we get closer to the result, I loathe myself even more for being a liar as well as a failure. You’ve given up so much to help me through medical school. The problem is me. I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. I’ve screwed everything up. You’ve every right to hate me.

I’ll be home mid-morning on Sunday. I’ll try to answer any questions you’ve got. As for what happens next, it’s 100 per cent up to you.

With all my love, and all my apologies, but knowing none of it will be enough.

Tim

It’s as though someone’s plunged me into an ice-cold bath.

I re-read it three times. Each time I believe it less.

Tim can’t have failed. There’ve been moments over the last four years when I’ve wondered if he can really handle the human side of medicine. But I’ve never doubted his academic ability, not since he got straight As in his A levels.

Yet . . . why would he lie?

There has to be more to this.

I get up, pull on my dressing gown, and begin to look for secrets, starting with his drawers in the flatpack IKEA tallboy in the corner of the room. The loose bolts wobble as I open each drawer in turn, wincing at the noise because the last thing I want to do is wake up Elaine.

I rifle through his underwear, his T-shirts, all neatly folded and arranged in colour order. I don’t even know what I’m searching for.

Love letters, perhaps. What if he’s still shagging Laura and the guilt has messed him up? But she’s engaged herself, now, to a handsome vascular surgeon.

Money, then?

He’s had the same work desk since sixth form, a fifties roll-top bureau, ugly but solid, designed to withstand nuclear Armageddon. As I push up the concertina lid, I know I’m crossing a line.

But I deserve answers.

Three piles of colour-coded revision cards sit to the right, along with uni correspondence. I scan the letters: his exam results last year weren’t spectacular, but he passed.

I roll the lid down again. What if it’s all in his head? Burnout, a breakdown?