Charlie had tried to be clever, I will give him that.

Thomas arrived without ceremony on Saturday afternoon, and he wasn’t what I expected. My preconceptions about him were based entirely on Charlie’s words, but the tall lanky boy who showed up didn’t appear to be the bad person that he’d been made out to be.

He had a pale complexion, unlike Charlie who was dark, and his blonde hair was hidden by a baseball cap. He was slender, with long legs, and I noticed that he had big feet. And he was extremely handsome.

Like Charlie, he spoke excellent English, and shook my hand before giving me a huge hug that caught me by surprise and also thrilled me. “I am so pleased to meet you,” he said, “My brother has told me about you and I think you make a beautiful couple.”

I was caught off guard and stammered. “We aren’t together. We are flatmates, nothing more.” 

“I apologise,” he continued, “I had presumed that you were together, but my brother does not tell me everything that he should.” 

Charlie spoke in French, which I interpreted as him telling Thomas that he would be sleeping in his room. Thomas nodded and followed Charlie to his bedroom where he threw his rucksack onto the bed. The room was bare, almost like a cheap hotel, and I later discovered that Charlie had boxed up his possessions and deposited everything in the corner of my bedroom.

I had wanted to hate Thomas from the first moment, but his politeness and sincerity made me warm to him. Then I remembered Charlie’s words, “He likes to have plenty of money and will exploit anybody to make sure he gets it.” I had to remain on my guard.

“I like your apartment,” Thomas said, “and thank you for letting me stay.” 

Charlie spoke in French again, but Thomas stopped him. “I think that it is only polite for us to speak English in front of our host.” Charlie scowled and didn’t continue the conversation and I took this to mean that he didn’t want me to understand what had been said.

In the afternoon, the three of us sat in spring sunshine outside the coffee shop at the end of the street. Thomas sat opposite me at the table and was very chatty, wanting to know more about me. Charlie was beside me and didn’t say much.  

“Enough about me,” I said, “I want to know about your life in Paris.”

“Ah, Paris can be exciting but it can also be a miserable place to live. It is a city of love, hope, and misery.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked. 

“When living in Paris you must live up to its reputation and I work in a bar so there are always plenty of girls available.” He smiled and I saw that he had perfect white teeth. “That probably does not excite you,” he continued, “but there are many available boys as well.” His blue eyes sparkled. “I think you should visit me and I will introduce you to lots of fascinating people.”

Charlie tried to change the subject.

“Maman et papa?” 

“They are good, Charlie. They worry and are disappointed that you did not come home for Christmas.” 

Charlie had said that he had gone to France to see his family at Christmas and this latest disclosure hit me hard. I looked to see what his reaction would be and he couldn’t look me in the eye. “Maybe I shall visit them at Easter,” he said quietly.

Thomas lit a Gauloises and offered me one. It was rare that I smoked these days but the circumstances dictated that I accept it. We blew smoke into the air and looked at each other, both aware that Charlie had been caught out. I thought that Thomas had meant to do it, but I also sensed that he felt sorry for me and looked sympathetic. I felt his leg touch mine, maybe by mistake, but he didn’t pull away. There was a moment of hesitancy, but I pushed my own against his, expecting him to recoil, but he didn’t, and instead began rubbing his leg gently against mine.

That was when I realised that Charlie had tried to be clever. 

He hadn’t wanted Thomas to visit because he was afraid that his secrets would be revealed. He was also aware that I might find Thomas attractive and so had portrayed him as being a no-good person. 

I was angry about the deceit,  and for the fact that I was no nearer knowing the truth about Charlie. I was also confused, because now I knew that Thomas had presented me with a dilemma.

I’m perfectly comfortable watching foreign movies because I find that reading subtitles comes naturally. I can breeze through French, Italian, and Spanish TV series without hesitation but must remind myself that I don’t really understand anything at all.

Charlie is French and comes without subtitles, but he speaks English better than most Englishmen. This morning, he is speaking French on his phone, and I suspect that he is  talking to Matis in Lille, and I try to concentrate on what is being said, but the conversation is too fast and animated. I hope that it is Matis because Charlie sounds pissed off with him.

I’m reading Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, and I’m pleasantly surprised that it’s easier to read than people make out. 

“Is everything okay?” I ask Charlie when he finishes the call. 

“Everything is not okay.”

“What’s the matter?”

“That was my brother, Thomas, and he wants to come and stay with us. I do not want him to come, but he insists.”

Charlie rarely mentions his Parisian family and if he does, he speaks of them as though they were part of another story, one that doesn’t concern me. I haven’t heard him speak about Thomas before and I’m intrigued. 

“I didn’t know that you had a brother. Is he older or younger than you?”

“He is two years older than me, but we look very different. He is tall and blonde, but I am shorter and darker.” Charlie brushed a hand through his thick black hair in case I hadn’t noticed. “My grandmother believes he is not my father’s son because he is not like the rest of us. There are no blondes in our family.”

“Your grandmother told you that?”

“She confided in me once.” Charlie slumped on the sofa beside me. “I do not want Thomas to come here.”

“What is he like?”

“Thomas is not artistic like me, in fact the opposite. He is shallow. He likes to have plenty of money and will exploit anybody to make sure he gets it. He is a bad person.”

“What does he do?”

“He has worked in a bar in La Villette since leaving school and has manipulated the owners into letting him manage it. Trust me, he is not a good person.”

“I think it is nice that he wants to come and see his little brother.”

“Putain!” He is jealous and wants to make my life difficult.”

“There is the small problem of where he will stay,” I said,  “because there are only three bedrooms, and it will become very overcrowded.”

“He will be here for two weeks, and he must sleep on this sofa.”

“I suppose he could sleep on the floor in your bedroom.”

“That will not do! I do not want to sleep in the same room as my brother.”

Charlie sat brooding and uttered what I presumed were French profanities.  

“I suppose we could ask Levi if he wouldn’t mind giving up his room for a couple of weeks and stay with his girlfriend.”

“That would not do either. Why should my friend have to give up his bed for my imbecile brother?”

A few months ago, Charlie hated Levi and made the same type of comments about him that he was making about his brother now. Once Charlie had found out that Levi was straight and didn’t fancy him, he had done his best to be nice, almost as if he wanted to be fancied after all.

“There is another solution,”! I said, “Thomas could share my double bed if he didn’t mind sharing with a stranger.”

Charlie was incredulous. “That is a shocking idea,” he cried, “I have never heard anything so ridiculous. You do not know my brother and yet you are offering to share your bed with him.”

“I’m trying to come up with a compromise because the sofa will be a very uncomfortable place to sleep for two weeks.”

Charlie stretched out and appeared to be fixated on the toes of his feet. 

“I have an idea,” he said. “I think it might be better if I give Thomas my bed, and I shall share with you for those two weeks. I’ve slept in your bed once before. Is that satisfactory?”

I didn’t really know what to say, and concentrated on my book again.

“By the way,” he said, “that is a very bad book that you are reading.”

It felt like morning but the room was still dark. Something had made me wake from the strangest of dreams.

There were five lions in the corner of the bedroom, and a man had come to entice them into a cage that he’d brought with him. He told me to cover myself with the duvet while he guided them around the foot of the bed.  

It had been a lengthy process, and once, when I allowed my arm to trail from the safety of the bed, a lion had put my arm in its mouth, unsure as to whether it should bite it off.

The man had prised the arm away and told me to keep it out of sight.

There was only one lion left, and that was when I heard the door to the apartment open and close. I needed to shout a warning to whoever it was, but I was awake now, and the lions had gone.

I checked my phone and it was 7am, and somebody had definitely entered the apartment because I could hear footsteps in the hallway that halted outside the bedroom door.

I couldn’t imagine who it might be because Levi was staying at his girlfriend’s, and Charlie was with friends in Manchester.

The bedroom door opened slightly, and a head appeared around it.

“Are you awake?”

I blinked from the light that shone from the hallway.

“What are you doing back home Charlie?”

“I couldn’t sleep and so I got the first train home.”

“Are you okay?”

“I am fine, but I thought I had better let you know that I had arrived home.”

“Cool,” I said, but I didn’t see any reason why he had to wake me because he could easily have slipped into bed and I would have been none the wiser.

“Are you sure that everything’s alright?”

“I am fine, just a little tired.”

He dumped his rucksack on the floor and came inside . 

“I still don’t get why you’re back so early.”

Charlie parked himself on the bed and looked around the room in the half-light.”

“Are you looking for something?”

“I’m sorry. I did not think and I suddenly realised that you might have somebody here.”

“There’s nobody here, and would it have mattered if I had?”

“No, but I would have been very embarrassed.”

Was my imagination getting the better of me? 

Had Charlie tried to catch me out? Had he deliberately come home early to see if I was sleeping with somebody? 

There was no reason for him to do so because we were both free to do as we pleased.

Charlie stretched beside me and rested his head on the pillow.

“Do you mind if I sleep here?” 

I didn’t know what to say, and Charlie mistook my silence as approval because he closed his eyes and started to drift off.

I looked at my phone and there was a BBC news alert that said that ‘Ukraine’s military was withdrawing its troops from Avdiivka – the key eastern town besieged by Russian forces.’ 

It didn’t mean anything to me, and besides, my mind was preoccupied with more interesting thoughts. 

The idea of going back to sleep seemed implausible. I listened to Charlie’s gentle breathing and remembered a Pet Shop Boys song that went something like

I don’t know why
It always comes as a surprise
To find I’m here with you
You smile and I am rubbing my eyes
At a dream come true

Except the dream hadn’t come true yet, and much as I would have liked to have held him in my arms and protected him, I resisted the urge to do so.

When I woke a few hours later,  the bed was warm, Charlie’s discarded clothes were scattered across the floor and he was curled up asleep underneath the duvet.

A parcel came for Charlie. It was a small brown box that had been posted in France. He was still asleep, so I put it on the side, and it would be hours before he noticed it.

“Why didn’t you tell me that I had a package?”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

Charlie ripped the box open and pulled out a pile of magazines. They were called Catholica and there was a photo of him on the cover. He was in his underwear, or rather somebody else’s, and was seductively looking up at a stained glass window.

“Look at these. Matis has published my photos.”

“Who is Matis?” 

“I told you about him. He’s the photographer I met in Paris, who styles himself on Jacques Henri Lartigue.”

The name rolled off his tongue, but I had no idea who he was, and the expression on my face gave me away.

“Lartigue was France’s greatest photographer.”

“Is Matis a good photographer too?”

“The best. He has published in all the major magazines, and this might be the making of me.”

Charlie closed the box and any hope that he might give me a copy quickly vanished.

Later that day, I googled Matis, but found nothing. I persevered and eventually found him after searching for photographers based in Lille. He had an Instagram account and amidst countless images of half-naked boys, I discovered Charlie’s photos.

I knew this body well from the times when he’d sat on the floor in only his underwear and painted. I would steal glances while writing, and then pretend to be concentrating on my work whenever he looked my way.

Charlie wasn’t mine and hadn’t given any indication that he might be interested in me, but the more I looked at the photos, the more I became jealous.

I was envious of Matis, whose images also populated the page, that he was younger, in his late twenties, and more handsome than me. He’d cast a spell on Charlie, and I was increasingly afraid that he might lure him away, back to his homeland, and leave me behind.

That night, Levi was working, and Charlie spent ages in the shower, followed by his normal routine of applying expensive lotions.

I opened a bottle of wine and binge watched a Swedish tragicomedy where a naïve 27-year-old loses his father in an accident and does everything in his power to avoid his grief, and slips into the adult world of sex, drugs, and alcohol.

Charlie finally appeared in silk pyjamas and dressing gown, his hair neatly combed, and smelling of expensive French cologne. He made himself comfortable on the sofa beside me and, like always, placed his bare feet on my lap.

“Will you massage my feet?”

I gently stroked his soft skin while thinking that it was an intimate moment, but Charlie was absorbed in his iPhone.

“Matis has asked me to go back for more photos,” he said.

I wanted to say that I hated Matis and wished that he’d shut up about him. I also wanted to tell Charlie that I’d become very fond of him, that I was falling in love, and wished that he’d stay here with me.

I didn’t say anything like that because I was afraid that if I had, Charlie might become upset and say that it wasn’t what he wanted, and that it might be best if he moved out.

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” I told him.

Charlie is finally back from France. He spent Christmas and New Year with his family in Paris and on the day I expected him back, he messaged to say that he’d gone to Lille instead. I didn’t ask why.

“How was your Christmas?” he asked. “Ok,” I said, “it was a quiet one, but Christmas was ages ago.”

Levi had spent Christmas with his mysterious girlfriend and the apartment had been depressingly subdued. I’d spent Christmas Day watching movies on Netflix.

“I have something exciting to tell you,” he said. “I met a guy in Paris who thinks I should be a model.”

“That’s good,” I replied, “but be wary of anyone who says you could be a model, even though he might be right”.

“I know, but this was different, and he invited me to go to Lille for a photoshoot.”

Charlie opened his phone and showed me photos from his Instagram account, the same one that he’d blocked me from seeing. There he was, in various stages of undress, and I had to agree that he looked good.

“The shoot was called Catholica,” he continued, “and the photographer thinks I make a good catholic boy.”

Looking at the erotic images, I would have described Charlie as anything but.

“Did you get paid for it?”

“There was no money, but it was good exposure.”

I felt like telling him that I’d done so much for exposure, but it rarely reaped rewards. I had learnt that exposure meant giving something to someone for free.

“I didn’t realise that you wanted to be a model.”

“I am a painter, but I believe I could make a career as a fashion model. It pays to multi-skill.”

In the time that I’d known Charlie I had realised that he was a dreamer, but that added to his French charm. He was certainly handsome, if not on the small side, and he certainly had the physique.

“Can I have a good look at the photos?” He hesitantly handed me his phone. His cheeks coloured, as if he was embarrassed to show me, and I flicked through them.

“They are very good,” I conceded. “Will you show them to Levi?”

“I think that Levi will have seen them already, because he follows me on Instagram.”

“Ah yes,” I responded, “he showed me while you were away, and I realised that I couldn’t see them because you’d blocked me.” Charlie couldn’t look me in the eye and looked nervously at the floor. “I’d like to follow you because I think your photos are excellent, but you obviously don’t want me to see them.”

“It’s not that,” he said,” I thought that you would think badly of me.”

“Not at all,” I told him, “I’m proud that you want to do something different, and the photos are very creative, but I understand if you don’t want me to see them.”

Whilst I was scrolling, I noticed a photo. It had been taken in Paris and showed a guy with his arm around Charlie. The guy had a baseball cap and wore a big coat that said, ‘blessed have not seen yet still believe.’ He had a broad grin that was matched by the one on Charlie’s face. They looked happy. I handed the phone back and pretended that I hadn’t seen it.

“I shall unblock you.”

At that point, Levi, the Polish boy with a broad Yorkshire accent, came in.

“Charlie, you’re back.”

“Hello Levi. Yes, I am back. What have you been up to?”

Levi nodded towards me. ”Did he tell you that I got him drunk?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“It was an amazing night. So good that he asked me to sleep with him.”

I squirmed with embarrassment because it was the first time that Levi had mentioned it and I had hoped that it had been forgotten.

Charlie was shocked. “What do you mean?”

“He said he wanted to take me to bed, but I had to turn him down.”

There was a strange look on Charlie’s face, and I couldn’t tell if it was pity, or disgust. He shook his head and went to make a coffee.

When I checked later, Charlie still hadn’t unblocked me, and I didn’t want to remind him because it might make me look desperate.

I mentioned it to Levi later who thought about it before responding. “There are some parts of his life that Charlie doesn’t want you to see.”