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.”