Victoria Pendleton - Between the Lines - My Autobiography

I would survive the cruel climb, as long as I made it to the top with Dad. I could taste my tenacity now. I could push myself some more.

My face felt shiny and wet. I could imagine how pale I looked against the dark grey sky. I lifted myself out of the saddle and heard my rasping breath. Coming from the back of my throat, it framed the space between Dad and me.

Yet the pain eased because, slowly, I realized that Dad was no longer getting away from me.

I was catching him. Out of my seat, and up in the air, I was catching my dad.

I kept pedalling. I kept riding. I kept climbing, higher and higher.

I am a twin. But my brother, Alex, always liked to remind me that he was an hour older than me. When you’re a child, an hour between twins seems important. I adored Alex, but I knew we were different.

When we were four years old that difference almost became terminal. I nearly lost Alex then. He was so ill with leukemia that I went and stayed with my grandparents for a few weeks. Alex was in and out of hospital and it was simpler that I was looked after by my mum’s parents – Alf and Mabel Viney.

Rather than being scared of the terrible disease that had invaded Alex, life with Alf and Mabel felt like a summer holiday. My nanna was just like Mum in making me feel like a four-year-old grown-up. She tied an apron under my armpits and handed me a plastic knife so I could pretend I was peeling new potatoes as I stood on a stool next to her at the sink. Granddad was just as lovely. He made me feel very important when letting me help him with his gardening.

Mum and Dad came to see me at least once a day. They always told me that Alex was going to be all right. He had lost all his hair and his head looked very shiny. But we would soon be back together again. They hugged me. And when they left I ran back to the kitchen or the garden, or just carried on dusting the front room with Nanna. I was content. I felt safe.

But maybe some deeper doubt uncurled inside me. Almost randomly, I started to pray every evening. I must have seen the pretty scene on television for I was fascinated by an image of praying, in a time of need on bended knees, at the bedside. Every evening I prayed, in my jim-jams, my hands clasped together neatly and a list of requests falling politely from my mouth – as I asked Jesus to help Alex get better and to look after Mummy, Daddy, Nicola, Nanna, Granddad and me. I did not understand the extent of Alex’s illness but I knew it was serious and that we needed help.

It might have worked because Alex survived. He was lucky that our GP had diagnosed his leukemia very early; and that chemotherapy had been so successful. The staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital also looked after him with great care. Alex began to recover and, eventually, we became a proper family again. To welcome Alex home, Mum and Dad allowed him to choose a special present. He asked for a rabbit. Alex called him Peter; and the name stuck even when we were finally told that Peter was actually a girl. It was hard to tell with rabbits.

Mum, Dad, Nicola, Alex and I lived in Stotfold, which was then a large village, rather than the town it is now, in Bedfordshire, not far from Stevenage. There wasn’t a lot to do in Stotfold but I was happy. Alex grew bored with the rabbit and I took over and looked after Peter. I was a busy girl – especially when it came to competing for attention. Mum and Dad still kept a close watch on Alex, just to make sure that there was no dark sign of the returning illness. I sometimes had to fight to get noticed as much; but, mostly, life felt sweet and good.

I also loved having a big sister who, besides being five years older, was much more creative and expressive than me. Nicky was a gifted musician and she was willing to break out on her own. Far more than me, praying on bended knees, Nicola became religious. She started to go to church with her friends.

I was still little, and so she allowed me to tag along with her. I liked Sunday mornings because Nicola let me use her roller skates on the way to church. It was an ordinary Church of England service but, even when I wasn’t skating behind her, I liked hanging out with Nicky. I was impressed that, on her own, she decided to get herself christened and confirmed.

Our parents were atheists which, Mum explained, meant they didn’t believe in God. But they found it amusing that Mum’s middle name is Mary and Dad’s is Joseph. Neither Alex nor I looked like the baby Jesus. But Mum and Dad were relaxed about Nicola’s religious discovery. They were happy for us to think for ourselves.

‘Enjoy yourselves, girls,’ Mum said every Sunday morning as, with me rolling along the cracked pavement on Nicky’s old skates, we weaved our way to church.

I followed Nicky cheerfully when she decided to switch to the Baptist church for a change of scenery. The Baptist service was a bit happy-clappy but we loved singing. We felt uplifted.

It was only when we went to the Sunshine Club in our school holidays that we became slightly less enthusiastic about church. On the day we learnt about the feeding of the five thousand we were also given cold fish fingers and white bread for our lunch. The club didn’t seem so sunshiney after that and, when I was six or seven, I swapped Sunday mornings at church for time with Dad on his tandem.

We’d go riding with his cycling friends, Andy and Gordon, and Dad would chat away to them all morning – only occasionally turning to ask if I was alright on the back. But I liked riding the tandem with Dad, on our own special bike for two, even though part of me wished I was still at home with Mum.

I liked doing everything Mum did on a Sunday morning when Dad was out on his bike. I liked cleaning the house with her. I liked sewing and baking and cooking. Most of all, every Sunday morning at home would revolve around Mum preparing our traditional roast which, just like her mother before her, she would serve to the family at half past one. I could have quite easily whiled away each Sunday with Mum, peeling vegetables, laying the table and getting everything ready for our meal together. But Mum never made me feel guilty for going out instead with Dad on the bike. ‘Have fun, Lou,’ she’d say.

Dad had loved riding his bike as long as he could remember. I began to understand that, for him, it was both part of his family past and his own personal escape from the world. His parents used to go out for weekend cycle rides when they were young, in groups of forty or more people. Cycling was a social event and, having moved from Kegworth in Leicestershire, where Dad was born, they loved the easy terrain around their corner of Bedfordshire, where they would pass through small villages on their relaxed Sunday rides with friends. It was perfect for bike riding.

Cycling became more solitary and personal for Dad. He always thought that, between him and his sister, he was the less favoured child and so, as a boy, my dad would find refuge from those feelings on his bike. He would ride further and further every weekend and his fitness and ability became increasingly evident.

By the time that Mum and Dad met, through work at the same company, he was serious about cycling. Max Pendleton was twenty-four; Pauline Viney was twenty-two. They were married within six months of meeting. Max and Pauline Pendleton, of course, went on a cycling honeymoon. There is a photograph of my mother in a family photo album which shows her having a break on top of a hill somewhere. She looks red and very puffed. I could relate to the exhausted look of Mum in that photograph. I knew better than anyone what it was like to go for a long ride with Dad. He never slowed down for anyone.

It felt as if the only way I could hold Dad’s attention was if I did what he liked to do most – ride a bike. Alex was a boy and, even if he had once been a very sick little boy, it seemed as if Dad went riding more with my brother than me. At St Mary’s Primary School in Stotfold I wrote a poem about my dad. It was heartfelt. The poem began with a line which said, ‘My dad’s got dark brown hair and he’s good at DIY.’ It wasn’t very punchy but in the last line I wrote, more yearningly, that I wished Dad took me out on my bike as often as he did with Alex.