All Bets Are On by Charlotte Phillips

my part. It wasn’t. My father made a swift exit and I sometimes wished I had too.’
    He glanced down in surprise as her hand crept unexpectedly across the table to touch his own.
    ‘You still stayed though, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘That’s the point. Whether you were glad to or not, you took responsibility. You should be proud of that instead of feeling bad because maybe you would have liked things to pan out a different way.’ She paused. ‘We all have times in our lives when we wish for that.’
    He took a long draught of his drink.
    ‘Family ties,’ he sighed. ‘I decided a long time ago they weren’t for me. I knew when Susie was old enough to manage by herself I’d be free. No one to rely on me or tie me down. Hold me back. The only person I have to worry about these days is me, and that’s the way I want it.’
    He picked at the fries on his plate, not really wanting them. She watched him in silence.
    ‘What about you?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t really have family ties like that,’ she said and took a bite of her baguette.
    Funny how she’d always wanted them though. Wanted to be needed by her family, indispensable, never thinking of the flipside of it, the responsibility that Harry had experienced. But then she’d never had a sibling.
    At least not one to stay for.
    ‘My family are...’ She searched for the right words. A complete shambles hovered on her lips.
    ‘Very self-sufficient,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t see much of them.’
    ‘Do they live in London?’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘My father lives in Kent. My mother is near the south coast.’
    ‘They split up?’
    ‘When I was thirteen.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I still saw them both, though. Not like you.’
    She’d been passed between them like some commodity, not feeling wanted by either. It had felt as if they were arguing over who didn’t have her, not over who did.
    ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, meaning it.
    She shook her head.
    ‘Don’t be. It was a long time ago and it was over pretty quickly. My parents never did any long-term thrashing out. My father just left at the first sign of trouble and my mother seemed glad to see the back of him. I never thought that was something to be grateful for at the time. At thirteen you just want them to stay together and keep trying. But in hindsight it was good that it didn’t drag on. Neither of them was happy.’
    ‘And are they happy now?’
    Her mind flashed on her mother, a cougar with a taste for short-term flings, and twenty-something Alejandro, her most recent squeeze. The beauty of living away meant not being introduced to the hideous torrent of unsuitable men. At least her father was doing respectability, although why he couldn’t have tried harder to do it with her and her mother she really didn’t know.
    She smiled brightly.
    ‘My mother is a free spirit. She seems happy enough. My father very quickly found someone else, got married again, had another child.’ Her mouth didn’t even flinch as she added, ‘A daughter.’ She was long beyond the teenage feelings of being replaced because she wasn’t somehow good enough. She was an adult now and she recognised those thoughts as childish. She’d built her own life instead where regard and respect were earned, not taken for granted, and where relationships were worked at.
    He didn’t leap in with a rush of sympathy and for that she was grateful.
    ‘Even after all that, you still want a family of your own.’
    She smiled at him.
    ‘Absolutely. At least I know I can’t make as bad a cock-up as they have.’
    And the desire to belong with someone, to be a valued part of a family, had never left her.
    ‘Of course, the beauty of the short-term no-strings fling is that you never reach the point of cock-up,’ he said. ‘You’re not together long enough to hate one another or be cheated on.’
    ‘But there has to come a point when short term isn’t enough, doesn’t there?’
    ‘I don’t see why. It works