Laura Nuttall’s mother reveals that she held her daughter’s dying hand and then, hours later, I completed one of Laura’s last wishes.

Nicola Nuttall, who lost her daughter Laura due to a cancerous brain tumor, climbed into her car on Monday to attend her usual appointment for blood donation.

After becoming angry that her cancer treatment had stopped all donations, the woman knew that 23-year-old was right.

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It was Nicola’s simple, immediate way to honour her daughter, whose incredible courage in the face of a devastating diagnosis even coaxed comedian Peter Kay out of semi-retirement.

Nicola, 53, said: “Laura was so public minded. She had signed up as soon as her 17th birthday and was upset that cancer made it impossible for her to donate blood.

“I knew she would have expected me to show up, no matter what. When I got there a part of me wanted to stand up on a table and shout, ‘My daughter died this morning’ but I resisted.”

Nicola, husband Mark, 60, and younger daughter Gracie, 21, spent an agonising 11 days by Laura’s bedside as she faded away.

After a few squeezes, the little squeezes in her hand finally stopped.

Nicola claims that Peter the comic, who became close friends with Laura as a student, continued to send her regular messages throughout her final days.

The family are now showing the same resilience in Laura’s death as she showed in life, vowing to carry on her legacy to raise awareness and funds for research into the cancer that killed her, glioblastoma multiforme.

Bucket list

Today Nicola reveals Laura’s final act of altruism, donating her brain to research on the disease.

The most common cancer among children and those under 40 years old, but only two percent of the research budget is allocated to it.

Nicola, of Nelson, Lancs, said: “Laura was very aware that things will never change unless there’s more research, and that’s why she decided to leave her brain to science, but it’s very emotional for us as her family.

“When she first signed up for it the nurse told me, ‘You can change your mind at any time because she’s your little girl’, and of course there’s a part of me that feels like doing that. Laura had to be satisfied.

“If it stops another family going through what we’ve been through, then it will be worth it.”

In a 2021 interview Laura poignantly asked: “What kind of legacy will I leave if I just focus on myself and not others?”

Her life touched thousands of strangers around the world as Nicola recorded her daughter’s highs and lows using the Twitter handle @shitscaredmum.

Laura also pushed herself forward to raise the profile of brain cancer and drew up an extensive bucket list which she described as “never ending, because when it ends, I end”.

She also completed her degree and drove a Monster Truck, met Michelle Obama and former American First Lady, Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse, gave a TV Weather Forecast, was in command of a Royal Navy Warship, shared stories and sat pillion with Ron Haslam, former champion motorbike racer and Dame Deborah James who died from cancer last June.

Laura’s boundless determination and sheer will to survive meant she outlived the year-long diagnosis she was given in 2018, which came during her first university term at King’s College London, where she studied politics, philosophy and economics.

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The eye examination that was required as part of the application for joining the Royal Navy Reserves revealed a swollen optical nerve. Subsequent tests confirmed she had eight tumours in her brain.

Laura did not give up. She endured eleven cycles of chemo, radiotherapy and several invasive procedures, along with private immunotherapy treatments in Germany paid by donations.

Peter Kay’s comeback was in the year 2021, when he performed two fund-raising gigs to benefit Laura. He had taken a four-year break from his public appearances.

Laura’s dad Mark is a film and TV storyboard artist — producing a series of sketches from a script to show how the finished production could look — and he knew Peter from working on his Noughties C4 sitcom Max And Paddy’s Road To Nowhere.

They had lost touch but Peter phoned after seeing Laura’s story on his local TV news.

He has since become a close friend of the Nuttalls and often visited Laura, who told Central Recorder last November: “He comes round and makes me laugh until my cheeks hurt.”

Nicola said: “Peter has been by our side all the way. He didn’t want to intrude but has been keeping in contact with us offering support.”

She continued: “Nobody knows what to say to us really. Laura, I miss you. I miss Laura the little girl, I miss the girl she was and I miss the future she’s not going to get.

“All grief is horrible, but to lose your child, who you’ve been with every moment of their life, whose every wish and every ambition you know, whose stories you have heard, whose hope you hold for them . . . it’s a very distinct type of grief.

‘When she was studying for A-levels Laura was also doing her advanced driving test and training for a marathon. She was always in a rush – and never more so than when she was diagnosed.

Nicola Nuttall

“I’m imagining Christmas morning when there are just the three of us.

“There’s a big pile of board games in the cupboard and I’m thinking I might as well throw them away because there are only three of us instead of four and we won’t want to play them again.

“People say you get used to a new ‘normal’ but I can’t think that far right now.”

Laura’s condition began to worsen this month and she lost the ability to speak, instead communicating with a thumbs up or down.

After she became unable to swallow, her family was told that there was not much hope two weeks prior.

Mark and Nicola put a couch next to the bed of the girl so that they can sleep with her.

The family also took their time saying goodbye.

Laura didn’t have time to ink matching strawberry and apple stencils. Gracie, however, did.

Nicola spent hours reading Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree to Laura, as she had done when she was a child.

Laura was still able to squeeze her family’s hands until two days before she died, and Nicola said she was “as tenacious in death as she was in life”.

It is cruel

She added: “I’d look at Laura over those last days when she was sleeping and think, ‘She looks as she’s always looked. Maybe she’ll wake up and do better today’.

“She’d been written off before and I thought, ‘I can’t under-estimate her’, but this cancer is so pernicious and so evil.

“It stole every bit of her, bit by bit. She lost her voice two weeks ago, then she couldn’t eat or swallow. Laura has lost all the qualities that defined her.

“It was heartbreaking because I’d give her a bed bath and look at how strong her body was, how fit and healthy she was.

“Her body was in great shape but her brain was not, and that’s what’s so cruel about it.”

Through tears, Nicola tells funny stories about Laura — how she convinced her and Mark to let her intern in America after secretly fixing up a room online instead of staying with a “friend” she invented, how she worked for Trading Standards, who would give her a £10 gift voucher to see if off-licences would sell her booze under age, and how she made her family laugh.

Nicola said: “When she was studying for A-levels Laura was also doing her advanced driving test and training for a marathon.

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“She was always in a rush — and never more so than when she was diagnosed.”

Laura, despite her high profile in the media, has requested that her parents arrange a private funeral attended only by her closest family members.

Nicola, Mark and Gracie intend to mark her life with a party or festival this summer, then return to fundraising for Laura’s charities.

Laura’s family has been overwhelmed by all the tributes posted online. Flowers and gifts are arriving every day at their house since Laura’s death.

Among the messages is a thank-you from a local secondary school which last year asked her to write a “life letter” to sixth-formers.

She signed it off with: “Be kind, be brave, be silly, be honest, be happy, be you.”

Laura — who once wrote a letter to her cancer saying: “I’m sorry I ruined your plans” — said that on the day she was diagnosed she had two options.

She added: “I could say, ‘All right, that’s fine, I’m going to sit here and die, or am I going to do something about it and stay positive?’ — and that is what I chose to do.”

Laura kept this vow until the bitter end.