‘I want to do show jumping on Fozzles.’ I said it a bit more loudly this time. ‘And win.’

Dad swallowed and cleared his throat. ‘It’s a good thing to want to do something. But you don’t necessarily need to win. Maybe just participating is what you’re after.’ He tilted his head to the side, and seemed a little concerned. ‘All the competition we had in the city is what I wanted us to get away from. Being ordinary is okay, you know.’

‘He’s right,’ said Coco, and Josh nearly fell off his chair. Dad and Coco being allies was a new thing. They’d had pretty much a constant stand off for the whole of last year. And for Coco to agree with him about being ordinary, of all things, was obviously a bit too much for Josh to take, because now he was spluttering and choking on his glass of water.

‘You okay, Josh?’ Mum asked. ‘Could you try not to react to your sister that way? She said something sensible and she doesn’t need you going crazy about it.’

She went to get him a napkin to cough into and the conversation changed and didn’t come back to me for the rest of the meal.

But I’d said it and I knew it was true. I wanted to jump. I wanted to do show jumping and win. It was a bigger buzz than riding, even though that was great too. Plus, I already loved competition; I’d proved that every year at the swimming and sports carnivals. I loved a challenge. Nothing was more of a challenge than learning a new sport and being the best at it. Anyway, it turned out that not only was I a natural, Fozzles was also a natural. And me on Fozzles was a totally ace combination.

‘I’ve seen her jump before,’ Ness had said that afternoon, ‘but she gives even more with you on her back.’

Maybe Dad didn’t understand but I knew Mum would. She ‘got’ me like no one else in the family did, not even Coco, which is surprising because we’re twins and everything.

Everyone thinks we should be exactly the same, but they forget that it’s identical twins who are like that. Fraternal twins like us are really just two sisters who happen to have been born on the same day. No one expects two normal sisters to be exactly the same. And Coco and I are really different. She’s beautiful and I’m not. She cares about what she wears and I don’t. She’s hilariously funny when she wants to be, although she doesn’t laugh that much herself. I make stupid jokes sometimes but I laugh more often. She makes a fuss and I shrug my shoulders.

Probably the biggest difference between us is that Coco holds back a bit. She’s cautious; she watches everything and figures stuff out before she tries it. I jump right in. Last year, when we arrived here, I was on a horse the day after we met Tessa and James. We rode everywhere all year long, while Coco refused to leave her room or even walk down the paddock.

What no one knew was that she’d been watching everyone and getting secret lessons from Ness. The day she turned up riding Cupcake, amazingly cool and awesome, was the day James fell in dreamy-smoochy love with her. Tessa told me that later, and I laughed. I mean, that kind of love at our age? It just shows another difference between Coco and me. She’s into that. I’m totally not. I’d rather run a race and win it.

Mum gets me. I think she was probably the same as me when she was a kid because she’s often said how much she wasn’t like Coco. Mum has her sports trophies in a box in storage, but she doesn’t look at them much. She says she’d rather look at mine, and I have a whole heap in my room. Running, swimming, cross country, even gymnastics for a bit. I’ve done lots of stuff, and Mum’s always taken me and she’s been there for all my competitions, clapping on the sidelines. So I wasn’t worried. Dad might not understand me wanting to win at show jumping, but Mum did.

After we’d cleaned up from dinner and I’d swept the floor, I’d had enough of listening to Josh and Coco bicker over the dirty dishes. I made Mum a cup of coffee, just the way she likes it, and took it out to her on the grass. The sun was finally going down; there was a pink and grey haze hanging in the air, and I could feel some cool currents sneaking up from the river. I sat down next to Mum and wiped my perspiring nose.

‘This will be the last week we’ll have to sit on the grass,’ she said. ‘Dad should have finished the deck in a few days.’

‘It’s going to make the house perfect. I still can’t believe we live here. And we built the house ourselves.’

‘I know. Crazy.’ She laughed and sipped her coffee.

‘I’m going to miss not being at home when school starts,’ I said. ‘It’s so beautiful.’

‘It’ll be different for you.’ Mum put her hand on my back. ‘School is different from home schooling. It’ll probably be a shock to go back, even though we only home schooled for a year.’

‘I’ll miss being with you the most.’ I smiled at her.

She smiled back and blew a kiss at me. ‘I guess you could stay home, if you really wanted to.’

‘No,’ I said. It was decisive and strong. ‘There’s a show jumping Inter-schools competition I want to go in. And after that, there’s State level. Maybe even Nationals. I looked it up. And I want to win it.’

Mum raised her eyebrows. ‘School it is, then. Are you nervous?’

I ignored the bubble in my stomach. ‘Nah. School’s easy. No problem at all.’

‘Well, I’ll take you to all the equestrian competitions.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘Same as I always have.’

‘Aw, you’re so nice.’

‘We’ll do it together. I’ll cheer you on all the way.’