LITMIR.BIZ

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way, Dad would not turn back. That was impossible. We had to press ahead until I found a new way out of the mess I had made. Dad put a lot of pressure on me but, in the end, I learnt how to read a map.

      I understood, deep down, that his unyielding way had been embedded into him during his childhood. He had been caned regularly at school and he remained a man who believed more in the proverbial old stick than the sweet and tasty carrot. Dad never smacked me but he did frighten me when he used his shouty voice. He was a very powerful figure and if I had to describe the dad of my girlhood years in one word I would say ‘extreme’. Dad either made me very happy or pretty miserable. There was not much bland stuff in between those extreme emotions.

      Alex was smarter than me in dealing with Dad. Even when Dad got frustrated with him, Alex remained relaxed. ‘Oh Dad,’ he’d say, ‘it’ll be fine.’ Alex, in the end, was granted much more leeway than Nicky and me. We were indecisive and susceptible to Dad’s moods and whims. He steered us in directions that Alex avoided.

      I couldn’t help but notice that Alex was cleverer than me at school, and much more popular. It didn’t upset me because I loved Alex. He deserved to be popular because he was so easy to be around. Alex helped me all through childhood – so much so that, on our first day of school, I’d been bewildered when so many kids burst into tears after their mothers left. I didn’t feel like crying. Why would I? At Etonbury Middle School in Stotfold I had Alex at my side. Even if I didn’t have many friends, I never felt lonely with Alex around. We were always in the same class and I worked hard.

      As we prepared to move on to senior school, at the age of thirteen, I had caught up with Alex. But it was obvious that, unlike me, my brother could sail through our classes and exams. I could have followed Nicola to Bedford Girls – a public school where she did well academically and musically. Dad and Mum were willing to make the necessary sacrifice to pay for my and Alex’s senior education. But Alex was happy with an ordinary comprehensive and I preferred to stay with my twin. We moved together to Fearnhill School, in Letchworth, north Hertfordshire, just under four miles from where we lived in Stotfold.

      Life became trickier. All the girls I knew at Brownies had mutated into ultra-cool teenagers who wouldn’t be seen dead with a bony runt like me. I was innocent and boring. At Fearnhill, I was consigned to the losers’ list. None of the cool girls wanted to do what I did – which was to play sport and listen to grungy, depressing music. They liked wearing make-up and learning how to smoke and pick up boys.

      I much preferred playing hockey, where I suddenly became a very competitive girl, and riding on my bike with Dad and Alex every Sunday morning. Of course I was confused. I wished I could become both stronger and more feminine. But I drew pride from the fact that we rode so far with Dad every Sunday.

      We racked up some big rides together. I remember telling my teacher at Fearnhill on a Monday morning that I had ridden fifty miles the previous day. ‘Fifteen!’ she said, as if I needed to be corrected. ‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘Fifty. Five-oh.’ I don’t think she believed me, even though she knew I was not a girl who usually lied. But Dad, Alex and I had really ridden fifty miles. We had stopped for a break in the middle but, still, fifty miles for a thirteen-year-old girl felt like an achievement.

      Alex and I also won lots of little trophies at grass-track meetings around the Home Counties. They felt more like picnics than anything serious and we enjoyed racing each other and some of the same kids that popped up all over the place. The grass-tracks developed our bike-handling skills and, allied to the stamina we’d forged on our Sunday morning marathons with Dad, Alex and I began to win regularly. We’d come home and say to Mum: ‘Look what we won! Ta-dah!’ And we’d wave our small cups and plinths of bronze cyclists in the air.

      Over the previous year, I had grown taller than Alex. Maturing more quickly than my brother, I no longer trailed behind him in speed and fitness. I also raced more often than Alex did in grass-track meetings because, so keen to please Dad, I hardly missed a competition. Alex was different. He didn’t feel compelled to go to the track every time with Dad.

      Early in the summer of 1994, when we were thirteen-and-a-half, Alex and I went with Dad to the world’s oldest grass-track meeting. Heckington, for English amateur riders like Dad, was significant. Deep in Lincolnshire, at the famous Heckington Agricultural Show, national grass-track titles were decided on a narrow track where the turns were tight and the sidelines were crammed with spectators.

      Dad was realistic about the limitations of amateur cycling. He always knew he would have to work either in accountancy or property management for a living. Cycling could never be more than a consuming hobby. But Dad loved winning at tracks like Heckington where there was more prestige at stake.

      This time only Alex and I went to Heckington with Dad. Nicola, at eighteen, was physically talented and rode well, but she was far more intent on working towards her A-levels and Grade Eight exams in the piano and flute. Nicky had seen her chance to escape and she took it. But Dad’s cycling hooks had dug deep into Alex and, especially, me.

      We raced at Heckington in a handicap for riders between the ages of nine and sixteen. I didn’t expect that, even in a handicap, I could beat boys of fifteen and sixteen. Victory for me would be racing faster than Alex. But I knew it was going to be difficult. As I had raced so much more than him that year, I was handicapped harder than Alex. I started behind him which meant I’d have to race considerably faster than my twin to overtake him.

      On the start line I was determined and ready. I wore a more modern kind of piss-pot on my head. A properly fitting helmet meant that there were no moments of being blinded every time I hit a bump. It was just me and my bike – up against Alex and his bike. We knew we could beat the other kids.

      My mind went blank at the gun and I pedalled hard. The grass track became a green blur beneath my tyres. Raising my head, I locked onto the flying figure of my twin. I knew I could catch him and, soon, the distance between us shrunk. It seemed much easier chasing Alex round a flat track than it did trying to haul in Dad on an unforgiving hill.

      I caught and then passed Alex on the final bend. I powered away from him down the last straight. Dad watched silently as someone shouted out to him. ‘Gosh, Max,’ the man said, ‘your girl was phenomenal.’

      Dad didn’t want to make a big fuss of me in front of Alex; but he then heard a more understated voice: ‘Pretty impressive …’

      ‘Yes,’ Dad said. ‘It was …’

      He told me as much later, when we were on our own. I shrugged him off. Dad tried again. He thought I could become a special cyclist if I put my mind to it and tried hard. It looked as if I had real talent and a lovely, smooth style of riding. ‘Yeah, Dad, thanks,’ I said, thinking a duty-bound father was obliged to say such words. Strangely, in that rare moment between us, I simply forgot how difficult it was to win Dad’s praise. I just assumed he was going out of his way to be kind to me because I had won. It was only years later that I understood how, alongside the grass track at Heckington, Dad really did believe he had seen something magical in me. Dad began to imagine a life for me that he might have wished for himself.

      The complications between me and Dad, perhaps as a consequence of Heckington, became more tangled. A familiar ritual, a mostly silent showdown, played out between us at home in Stotfold a year later. I had been invited to the movies by two of my friends. We all knew I was hardly inundated by bosom buddies and so such invitations carried real meaning and novelty inside their simple appeal. It was not the first time, but the opportunities for me to go the movies or even parties on a Saturday night with some friends were rare enough to be exciting. Mum and Dad reacted in typically contrasting ways.

      As always, Mum was pleased. She thought it would be good for me to go out and enjoy myself. ‘You deserve some fun with your friends, Lou,’ Mum said.

      Dad was different. Mum had already said it would be fine, but I felt the old dark pull towards him. Dad just grunted when I asked if it would be alright to go to the movies that evening. I repeated the question. Dad answered me finally but, with just two words, his response became more clouded.

      ‘Suit yourself …’ he said with a shrug.

      That

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