Charlie reappears after an hour and talks to me about London and the fantastic things he’s done in the three hours that he’s been there. I can tell that he is tired. I ask him if he’s OK, but he turns away and disappears again. The barman, who is fit, but skinny as fuck, looks at me, and I smile like I’m the friendliest guy in the world. He smiles back, like he fancies me, or pities me, and because I’m drunk. I’m convinced that he thinks I’m the best looking guy in the place, but he goes to mop the floor. 

I’ve had time to reflect on the time that Thomas spent with us. The blonde French boy had gone back to Paris, and I missed him. I’d forgotten how emotional I could be and fought back tears when he’d said goodbye. The question I asked myself, was why I’d become so attached to him.

Thomas was flirtatious and for the two weeks I thought that it would only be a matter of time before I got to sleep with him. But the two brothers turned out to be alike, teasing, and seductive, without ever doing anything. Charlie had made me believe that Thomas was straight. Either he was lying or couldn’t see that his brother had a different agenda. 

Thomas’s unexpected advances went unnoticed by Charlie. Before he left, Thomas had made me promise to visit him in August and was keen that Charlie shouldn’t come with me. 

I thought about their parents, and how proud they must be to have two fine looking boys, even if there was doubt over Thomas’s parentage. Did they realise that both sons were philanderers? And would they smile, or be horrified, to discover that a man they didn’t know, had fallen in love with both?

Thomas’s departure made the apartment seem empty, and each time I walked into the living area, I expected to see him with his pale long legs sprawled across the coffee table.

“I am glad he has gone,” Charlie said. “I told you that he would cause trouble, and I was right.”

“What trouble did he cause?”

“You are moping around the apartment because he has gone, and that means that my brother has played with your mind, and you did not resist.”

I could feel myself colouring up and made a pretence of tidying cushions on the sofa. “I’ve no idea what you are talking about.”

Charlie sat cross-legged on the floor and spread his latest paintings in front of him. “Did you think that I could not see what was happening?”

“Nothing happened,” I replied. “I tried to be hospitable towards your brother, that’s all.”

“And yet,  you still managed to fall in love with him. You are no different to all the other people that he has tricked.”

“Charlie, you said that your brother was straight, and that turned out to be a lie.”

“My brother will sleep with anybody if he thinks that he can benefit from it. He will sleep with men and women. There is no distinction between them.”

I thought about the private conversation I’d had with Thomas and the stories that he’d told me about Charlie. “It seems to me that you are both alike, and besides, I didn’t sleep with your brother.”

“Then you are fortunate because he does not love you. He loves only himself.”

I slumped on the sofa and watched him make a show of rearranging the canvases. “Charlie, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that you’re jealous.” He tutted but didn’t reply.

I spent the rest of the day writing and tried to keep away from him. We were annoyed with each other, and the limited contact we had, turned out to be frosty. I realised that this was the first time that we’d fallen out.

I went to bed around midnight and expected Charlie to sleep in his own room, the one that Thomas had slept in for a fortnight. I couldn’t sleep, and about one in the morning I heard the patter of feet in the hallway. The door opened quietly, and Charlie came into the bedroom to undress. He slipped into bed beside me, and I felt the warmth from his body.

“I do not like it when we fall out,” he said gently. I didn’t reply. “And I was hoping that I could sleep here all the time, if that is okay with you?”

“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.”

Charlie appears to have moved into my bedroom. It was supposed to be for two weeks while Thomas slept in his room, but there are signs that he’s here to stay. I hadn’t understood why Charlie had boxed his possessions up. It was only his brother who was using his bedroom, and not a stranger. In the days that followed, Charlie started unpacking the boxes and claiming residency.

I walked into the bedroom and there was a pile of books stacked neatly beside the bed. Pasolini’s Requiem, Arditti’s the Celibate, Dancer from the Dance, and Eric Jourdan’s Les mauvais anges. I hadn’t realised that Charlie could read as well as speak both languages. I didn’t realise how pernickety he was either. I looked at his books and didn’t put them back in the right order, and he quickly rearranged them until he was satisfied.

There is also the amount of time he spends half naked on my bed, his head resting on ‘his’ pillows, while scrolling through his phone. I realised that he was updating his Instagram and felt a bit guilty. I’d manoeuvred my way around him blocking me by using a fake account and I could now see everything he posted. I had been shocked at first, photos of Charlie in erotic poses, but something became apparent, and it was that Charlie seemed enamoured with older males, guys around my age, and that gave me hope.

But I couldn’t help feeling that my privacy was evaporating, and that Charlie was hi-jacking a part of my life. Did I mind? Probably not. There was something beautiful about him wanting to spend time sleeping in the same bed. Thomas had said that Charlie wanted to feel safe and that made me feel good. It was also obvious that this was all that Charlie wanted.

I always went to bed first and Charlie would slip into it in the early hours of the morning. We might have a brief conversation, but when he stopped talking, I knew that he’d put in EarPods and was listening to music, and that he couldn’t hear me. He never read his books and that made me realise that the books were for show only. I was happy with the arrangement, that sense of cosiness, but deep down I hoped for something more.

And then there was Thomas, that lanky brother of his, who’d settled into the British way of life, albeit for a brief time, remarkably well. Charlie had warned me about him, but he hadn’t turned out to be like any of the things he’d said. Thomas was good looking and flirtatious, and I had to keep reminding myself that he was straight, but the longer he stayed, the more I realised that I was falling in love with him too. I hadn’t done anything to encourage him, but there were the delicate touches he made, the affectionate kisses, and the occasional tweak of my leg under the table. Charlie was oblivious to it all but to an outsider it might have seemed like something was going on. As two dreamy weeks rolled along, I asked myself which of the two brothers I preferred most, and I found it difficult to answer.

One night, Charlie fell asleep while we sat drinking wine and watching Ripley on Netflix. I decided to call it a night and wandered through to the bedroom. I had barely stepped through the door when two hands grab me from behind. Thomas spun me around, hugged me and planted a kiss on the cheek. It was an enthralling experience and I found myself reaching down the back of his shorts and squeezing his arse cheeks. I expected him to pull away, but he took it in his stride. They were soft and smooth and not what I expected. It was the point that I wished Charlie were anywhere but in the flat.

That was all that happened, but it was enough to send me to bed in a rapturous mood. I’d made up my mind and decided that Thomas was the one I wanted. I recalled something somebody once said to me. Make sure that it is love, not lust. I didn’t care either way.

Charlie crept into bed an hour later and did something completely unexpected. He leant over and gave me a kiss on the lips. I wished he hadn’t because that confused matters even more.

“What do you think of Thomas?”

“He’s turned out to be completely different to the person you described.” Charlie had painted a bleak picture about his brother, and so far he hadn’t matched that description. Thomas had turned out to be a thoroughly decent person, and easy on the eye.

“Do not be fooled by appearances. I meant what I said about him.”

“I don’t know whether to believe anything you say anymore.” I was referring to the revelation that he’d lied about visiting his parents at Christmas. He didn’t reply.

Thomas had been here a couple of days, and it was the second night that Charlie had shared my bed. It was strange because apart from one night stands, I was used to sleeping alone.

The first night had been awkward. I’d gone to read while Charlie stayed up late talking to Thomas. I pretended to be asleep when he came to bed. He was wearing only his underwear when he slipped between the sheets, but that wasn’t unusual because he spent most days like this. 

In a perfect world, in my colourful imagination, Charlie would have cuddled up to me and we would have spent a memorable night entwined with each other. But Charlie wasn’t like that. He put in ear buds and started watching something on YouTube. 

I wanted to touch him, I wanted to say that despite his shady lifestyle, that I loved him. Instead, I was motionless, willing something good to happen, and waited until I fell asleep.

In the morning, Charlie laid with his hands behind his head. “I had a strange dream last night, and I was furious with you. I dreamt that we were in Paris one night, and we had argued, and so I had gone to a bar on my own. In the meantime, you had gone for a walk and met Madonna in a dark alley. There was nobody else around. You fooled together and made silly videos on your phone. You showed them when we met up later and would not share them with me, and I was furious because you do not like Madonna like I do.”

I told this tale to Thomas later that day. 

“Charlie has always had strange dreams,” he said, “ever since he was a child. Sometimes he is frustrated because the dreams are not real. Once he dreamt that I had been abducted by a monster that lived in the Paris sewers and was annoyed when he found me drinking hot chocolate the following morning. Be satisfied that it was not a violent dream because he is likely to hit you in his sleep.” He paused. “But he would not deliberately hit someone that he loves.”

“I don’t think for one moment that Charlie loves me.”

“Then he is a fool because he should know that you are perfect for him.”

It had been decent of Thomas to say so, but I couldn’t help thinking that he was trying to flatter me, or at best, flirt with me. I looked at him, dressed in shorts and t-shirt, his pale long legs stretched out before him, and saw how different he was from his brother. 

“Charlie can be selfish, and stubborn, and he can be deceitful when he wants his own way. My brother must settle down with a man he can trust and who will care for him.”

“I don’t believe that I’m that person,” I replied. “We’re quite different in our ways, and Charlie won’t be around forever.”

“If you believe that, then you are fooling yourself. Charlie will stay where he is wanted. He is sleeping in your bed and that will make him feel safe. I am envious because that is something I would also like.”

I remembered a night many months before, shortly after Charlie had arrived to stay with me, and we’d gone to a busy bar. Just as we were about to leave, Charlie had gone to the toilet, and I waited outside. I stood on the other side of the street and watched as he came looking for me. I saw the panic on his face when he couldn’t find me, and the relief when he did.

Thomas stood up and I saw how slender he was. He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me towards him and despite his lean frame, I realised that he was strong and broad chested. 

“If Charlie is not interested, I might break my promise and sleep with a handsome man.” He gave me a friendly kiss and I could feel his soft bristles against my cheek.

I felt young again, recalling those carefree days when every guy was going to be better than the last one.

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.