Charlie asks me if I would rub tanning lotion onto his back because he’s off to Barcelona again.

“You’re from France and are naturally brown,” I tell him. 

“I must look my best for the beach.” . 

We are in the kitchen and Charlie, in just his underwear, gives me a tanning glove and sprays Gatineau Golden Glow onto it. 

“Rub it all over my back please.” 

It feels like I’ve got a glove puppet on my hand, and he drops his underwear slightly so that I can see the crack of his arse. 

“Everywhere please,” he commands, and I’m obliged to rub lower until I’m stroking the tops of his buttocks.

The bossy boy has me at his command and he’s asking me to do something intimate. I have mixed emotions. Excitement and sadness.

I decide to test him.

“You should have asked Levi. He would do a better job.”

“I cannot ask him,” he replies, “because he will tease me and say that I am trying to seduce him.”

I think that Charlie might be afraid to ask Levi because he likes him… probably loves him… and I’m sparing his embarrassment.  

I feel jealous. That critical word which can have catastrophic consequences.

“Would you like to seduce him?”

“Never,” he says scornfully. “Levi is a clown.”

“Have a good time in Barcelona,” I say. 

“Thank you. I will do that, but I shall miss you.”

Charlie had been quiet for a week, still upset about Levi staying in the apartment.

“It is too small for three people, and I wanted to use that room as a studio.”

I’d told him that Levi was only here for a few weeks. I wanted to add that the arrangement was like his own, but he’d decided to make it permanent. I didn’t say anything because young French boys can be very temperamental.

“I miss our quiet nights together,” Charlie said sadly.

Levi, the Polish lad with the broad Yorkshire accent, had been a whirlwind, his energy blasting through the apartment. He went out, came in late, and slept until lunchtime. He’d told Charlie that he worked in a bar and was very popular with customers. I could imagine that because he talked and smiled all the time.

“You don’t like me, do you?”

The conversation took place on the balcony. Charlie, in his underwear because he’d been painting in the sunshine, and Levi, dressed in only his blue jeans.

I was conscious that old Mrs Hayward across the road would be absorbing everything as she watered her window boxes. There was a lot of naked flesh to see. I took them coffee and sat with them.

“It is not that I don’t like you,” Charlie replied, “it’s because you are always happy and too noisy.”

“I thought it was because you thought I’d stolen your boyfriend.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“You know very well that I’m not, and besides if I was, you’d be the first to know because you’d have heard us.”

“I am here,” I said. It had been a long time since people had fought over me, or at least appeared to.

“We are not boyfriends,” Charlie confirmed. “We are simply flatmates.”

Levi, smiling as always, sat back, and put his bare feet on the table.

“Then why don’t you like me?”

Charlie hesitated.

“I have told you already. You are too loud, and bounce around all day, and I cannot concentrate on my work.”

Levi got up and disappeared inside. Charlie smirked because he thought he’d scored a victory, but Levi returned with a damp cloth in his hand.

“What are you doing?”

Levi wiped a streak of blue paint from Charlie’s cheek.”

“You’re very messy when you’re painting.”

“I am not! I must have caught my hand on my face.”

“Blue and red makes you look cute,” Levi teased.

“I have not been using red paint.”

Charlie rubbed his cheek but couldn’t stop Levi rubbing it again, this time harder, and faster.

“Stop it!”

“I’m wiping your face like your mother used to,” laughed Levi, “and I’m sorry, it’s not red paint, it’s because you were blushing.”

He threw the dirty cloth onto the floor, sat down again, and put his feet back on the table.

“Your feet are dirty,” Charlie said.

“I think you make out that you hate me, but really you’re madly in love with me.”

“Sacré bleu! That is so childish.”

Charlie got up, straightened the band on his boxers, and went back over to the painting that had been drying in the autumn sunshine. Levi laughed out loud, mocking him, and Charlie could be heard swearing under his breath.

I listened to Levi’s laugh and Charlie’s cursing and felt disheartened. I’d thought that Charlie was envious because Levi had encroached on our lives. But what if it was true? Over the past few days Charlie had become increasingly hostile. Did Charlie really want Levi?

There was a time not so long ago when I was alone. The apartment was mine only. It is big and lonely, not that I spend much time in it, but it’s a place where I can retreat.

That was also a time when I had more money. It’s easy to save money when you are living alone.

That changed the day Charlie from Paris arrived in his old Austin car. He needed somewhere to stay for a few weeks and everyone thought my big apartment was the solution.

I agreed and I gave him a room and bed, a door key, and the run of the place. Charlie liked it, and it was soon apparent that he had no intention of leaving.

A van appeared one sunny morning and a man said he’d got several boxes for me. Not for me, you understand. There were about fifteen neatly packaged crates, each containing books, DVDs, vinyl records, and lots of clothes.

Charlie spent hours unpacking his possessions and carefully placing them around his room.

The following week more boxes arrived containing canvases, paint brushes, sketch pads and more clothes.

Charlie had moved in, and I didn’t really mind.

“This apartment has character,’ he said. It does have a charm about it but he’s never offered to pay for his stay. Nor does he pay for the food that he eats.

Charlie’s way of saying thank you is to offer small gifts. A poem he’s written, a picture he’s painted and sometimes a book he’s seen and knows I will like.

It’s all quite nice really.

‘We are like a couple,” he once joked. Except that we aren’t because I continue my liaisons with other men, and Charlie keeps disappearing to London and Paris to visit galleries. I never ask him what else he gets up to.

He always comes back.

Most people think we are a couple, and that is a nice thought. They think our nights consist of sharing a bed and being lovers. We aren’t, but I’d like to think that one day we might be. 

Am I jealous of Charlie? I’m beginning to realise that I am.

He’s announced that he’s going to Barcelona for a week in September. He showed me photos of the hotel he’s staying in. The Monument Hotel. Four stars and all that. I asked him how much it was costing and he said it was only €800 which sounded a lot. I checked out how much that would be in English pounds and it came to £700 which still sounded a lot.

“You don’t mind me going away?” Charlie asked.”I need a holiday.”

I wanted to say that I did mind. That I would like to go with him. That I need a holiday more than he does. That he can afford to go because he’s living for free. That I can’t afford to go because I pay for everything.

I said none of these things.

“It sounds wonderful,” I said. “I hope you have a lovely time.”

Charlie is sitting on the sofa and looks restless. He drinks a glass of red wine. Mouthful after mouthful. This means that he wants something, or there will be an awkward question.

I slump in the chair opposite. He picks up an old magazine and flicks through it, all the time watching me. A photograph falls out and lands on the cushion. Charlie picks it up and looks at it with a look of surprise. What is this photograph? He is a poor actor, and this routine has obviously been rehearsed. He holds it up for me to see. It is a black and white image of a pair of feet and the words, ‘My feet, Andrey.’

“Whose feet are these?” he asks. “

“Are you jealous of a pair of feet?”

“Why should I be jealous of feet? I’m merely interested as to who this Andrey is, the one who also signs it with a kiss.”

Charlie is staying here and has given no indication that he’ll be leaving anytime soon. He feels threatened. “Where is this Andrey?”

That is a good question. What happened to Andrey? I have no idea.

Andrey was from Krakow and was here because somebody recognised his potential as a model. He stayed in the apartment for a few weeks and did a photoshoot for an arty magazine for which the photographer placed snails on his face. Like many Polish boys, he was blessed with the look of an angel, but the harshness of the language sometimes made him sound abrasive.

The thing about Andrey was that he cared little about good looks but was obsessed with his feet. Big bony feet: his shoes were size twelve. We were never lovers; he was far too good looking for me to consider it. But he used to lay on the sofa, the one where Charlie sits now, and liked me to massage those exquisite feet.

Andrey wanted me to rub and tickle them and he’d squirm with pleasure until he nearly had an orgasm. (I once knew somebody that reacted the same way when I rubbed his nipples). He told me that the part of the brain that processes the sensation people get from feet was next to the area that perceives genital stimulation. It seems bizarre now but appeared perfectly normal then.

One day, Andrey had gone. I never knew where. But a few months later I received the photograph by post. The one being waved accusingly at me now. I once looked up Andrey online and it appeared that his modelling career hadn’t taken off. There was nothing. Not even a hint on social media.

I tell Charlie. “The photo must have come with the magazine.”