“I must be honest with you,” said Thomas. “There was a reason for my visit.” He sat opposite me outside the bar and puffed on a vape. “I came here because my mother asked me to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She asked me to check up on Charlie because she was concerned about him.”

“Charlie is fine,” I said. “He seems quite happy here.”

“I know that, mon ami, but he is very secretive and tells us nothing. I am sure that he has said little about his life in Paris.”

Thomas was right about that. Ever since he moved in, Charlie had given little away.

He drank from a glass of wine and continued. “Charlie had a difficult childhood. After he was born, my mother became ill, and found it difficult to raise two children. For the most part, Charlie was raised by my mother’s sister, Aunt Celine, and that meant that we were apart for many years.”

Thomas had requested that we have a drink together and had made it clear that he didn’t want his brother around. When Charlie had said that he was going out to sketch, it was the opportunity for us to get together. But I had misinterpreted the situation.

“Aunt Celine allowed Charlie too much freedom and he grew up believing that he was entitled to everything. He was a wild child. He came back to us but found it difficult to settle at home and in school. My grandparents said that Charlie took after his father who was also a wild child.”

“Not like you.”

Thomas laughed. “You might have noticed that I am very unlike my brother. I suspect that I am not my father’s child, and so I did not inherit my father’s genes.”

It was a lot to take in.

“Charlie is clever, very artistic, but he was expelled from school when he was a teenage boy.”

“Why was he expelled?” I asked, feeling increasingly uncomfortable about Charlie’s troubled past.

“Charlie is a seducer, he always has been, and he thought that he could have anybody he wanted. Let me say that he chose wrong and ruined a man’s life. When he was old enough, he moved out of the family apartment and started living his bohemian existence.”

“Where did he go at Christmas?”

“I do not know,” he said.

“He told me that he was seeing his family, but now I know that he lied.”

“He was in Paris, that I do know, but with whom he stayed is something he will keep to himself.”

“I suspect that he was with a guy called Matis.”

“Matis?” Thomas laughed again. “What do you know about Matis?”

“That he is a photographer from Lille and took erotic images of Charlie.”

“I don’t doubt it. Matis is an excellent photographer. I introduced him to Charlie at Christmas because he came into my bar. But I am sure that Charlie will not have mentioned that Matis is married with two young children and is as straight as a ruler. ”

“He didn’t,” I said, “but I suppose that makes me feel better.”

“Charlie wants to be famous, as an artist, a model or by any other means. He may be my little brother but he is also a dreamer.”

It was an afternoon of revelations. “What about you? Where do you fit into all this? I’m finding it difficult to know which brother to love.”

Thomas poured two more glasses of wine, and looked me in the eye. “I shall be gone soon, and I will tell my mother that Charlie is living with someone who loves and cares for him. That he is very fortunate. That she must not worry.” He hadn’t answered my question. “And I hope that you will visit me in Paris, and I can show you exactly the type of person that I am.”