Charlie

The Longest Journey
Charlie is one of Aprils closest friends. Like April and Emma, he lives in Venice at the Border House, and works behind the bar at the Fringe Cafe. However, like most young people in Venice, Charlie has greater aspirations - he tells April he was born to be a dancer. His biggest dream is simply put - "a dark stage, a packed auditorium, and a single spotlight."

Charlie left his home in St Vincent four years ago, and has been living and studying in Venice for the last three. Back home he has several sisters, but doesn't seem to have gotten on that well with his father, who considered he should get a job in the factories like him and his grandfather rather than pursue dancing. His father was a volunteer fireman, though, and Charlie remembers that on some Summer days he would cool the kids down with the hose. Those times he loved his father more than ever. In the summer when April's adventure begins, Charlie is saving to fly home for a visit. Fiona says Charlie was one of the first tenants at the Border House - possibly why he has one of the best rooms - and describes him as a true gentleman.

Charlie is a kind person who's happy to talk to April and listen to her problems. He's also very open minded, trying to encourage April to talk about her experience of Shifting to Arcadia, and talking worriedly with her about the incident where a Banda playing a pipe appeared from the Fringe Cafe's jukebox. He finds it frightening that many in the Fringe just chose to pretend it hadn't happened. Both he and Emma confront April at one point as concerned friends, wanting to know what's been happening with her and why she's been going to the dangerous Metro Circyle herself.

When April has a Bak-Bar in the Bandas Spirit Dig, it is Charlie who appears to speak for the 'good' side of the truth. He comforts her and tells her she isn't alone. He also reveals that Charlie is in love with April. In the first chapters, both Fiona and Emma hint that they were well aware of how Charlie felt and that April just hadn't realised it yet, or connected her own feelings. Earlier when she entered the Fringe, April had said she loved Charlie dearly, "as a friend". Writing about her experience in her diary after her Bak-Baar, April says that she hadn't guessed Charlie loved her, but she doesn't feel the same way.

Charlie does not appear in the later chapters: though April doesn't meet up with him, Lady Alvane tells her that her friends are angry because she didn't confide in them. Given their history, it's likely Charlie is more concerned about April than angry.

Dreamfall
Life in Venice is very different for Charlie now. After the Collapse, Charlie was able to buy the Fringe Cafe at a reduced price, and he owned and managed the cafe before selling it to its current owners, who hired him back as the manager of what was now a chic nightclub. He was contacted by Reza Tamiz under his codename Jericho while he was investigating the Static, and he was able to point both he and later Zoe Castillo to the Victory Hotel, formerly the Border House.

Though he still retains his kindness and good nature, Charlie has become hardened to life. At some point he lost his path on the way to being a dancer (and confesses to Zoe, wistfully, that he used to be enrolled at VAVA), despite his assertion in TLJ that he definitely didn't want to be "a bartender all my life", though we don't know why he gave up his dream.

He misses April but has stayed friends with Emma over the years, even though she is now based on the other side of the world in Europolis He also knows Marcus Crozier, Emma's old friend, though he disapproves of his lifestyle. Although he is still not clear on what happened to April, and knows little about the Balance or Arcadia, Charlie will help out if he's needed.