ne thing was certain, that Blanche had had nothing to do with Alice ‑ it was Kedi entirely who made love to her. For Blanche, Dinah’s plump friend had been making love to Dinah for the last quarter of an hour (and enjoying it pretty well): so you see only Kedi could have been making love to Alice.

The way Dinah made love to her girlfriends was just as passionate and sensitive as the way she made love to Alice. Kedi had made love to Dinah earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great sofa, Kedi was having a grand game of romps with her young little body, which was, like that of all the other girls in the living room, free of all encumbrance.

“Oh, you wicked wicked thing!” cried Alice, catching up with Kedi, and giving her a little kiss. “Really, Dinah ought to have totally worn you out! You ought, Dinah, you know you ought!” she added looking reproachfully at her sister, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage ‑ and then she scrambled back into the sofa, pulling Kedi back and showering her breasts with kisses. Kedi rested very demurely on top of her, watching Alice’s love‑making, and now and then putting her lips out and gently pressing them against Alice’s forehead.

After a while the two girls got quite passionate and then soon wore out their passion for each other on the sofa. Alice looked across the room at her sister and Blanche who seemed similarly sated by their own love‑making. Kedi smiled indulgently at Alice and lay down on her back on the sofa. Alice who had somehow fallen to the floor and knocked over the Chess set that had been set out for a game that Blanche and Kedi had been playing earlier.

Alice stood up and leaned against the mantelpiece looking out at the rest of the room. She smiled indulgently at Blanche and Dinah who were curled up together in one mass of white flesh. Blanche came from Brook, a district where nudity was the norm rather than the exception, and felt most comfortable naked anyway. Most of the white flesh that Alice could see belonged to Blanche, who was a very plump girl, but one on whom plumpness was actually very attractive, unlike, Alice couldn’t help wincing, Mrs Duchess. Kedi also came from a place where nudity was the norm, but that was another country and not just another district. The two girls were always naked, whatever the occasion ‑ one black and the other white ‑ just like chess pieces.

Alice turned round and looked at the same view of the room through the looking‑glass over the mantle‑piece. The view was different mostly in that Alice could see herself, a girl who differed most from the others by her tenderer years. A girl too young for breasts and still a little bit of a tummy above her smooth crotch. She wandered to the window and looked out into the garden next door where she could see an oldish gentleman making love to a much younger woman on the lawn. He didn’t appear to be very expert and indeed he was balancing very badly on top of her. The younger woman didn’t seem to mind, but Alice couldn’t help thinking that there didn’t appear to be a lot of passion in their love‑making.

There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she was watching the old man she turned over the leaves, to find some part that she could read. It looked at first sight like a normal children’s book ‑ the sort of book that perhaps Enid Blyton might write ‑ and, indeed, it was a collection of shortish books gathered together in an omnibus edition. Curiously however although the protagonists were all children as the pictures made clear and the style was pitched at children of Alice’s age the subject matter was what Alice had always been made to understand to be very adult.

The stories seemed to concern the sexual adventures and misadventures of children mostly with other children and very rarely with adults. The pictures and text didn’t, however, leave very much to the imagination. There were drawings of children with erect penises, close‑ups of little girl’s vaginas and many pictures of girls and boys doing all sorts of sexual things with each other. The main saving grace that Alice could see was that no adults participated, even though there was often an adult man or woman watching or masturbating.

“That’s a book I brought here from Brook,” commented Blanche, who had been watching Alice read the book. “The authoress, Honore L’Oeuf, is very popular. She’s written lots of best‑sellers.”

“But children’s books aren’t like that here!” commented Alice.

“And more’s the pity,” smiled Blanche. “People here seem to think children don’t have any sexual desires at all until they’re older. In Brook nobody thinks it strange for children to have sexual fantasies or even to make love to each other.”

Alice looked at the book more closely. “Isn’t it a little disgusting what all these children are doing?”

“Isn’t what you and Kedi do together just as disgusting,” retorted Blanche.

Kedi heard her name and looked up at Alice whose back was now to the window and whose figure now was a silhouette framed by the sunlight. “It’s not at all disgusting,” Kedi said, defending Alice.

Blanche let Alice borrow the book, The Collected Works of Honore L’Oeuf, and Alice took it with her to bed to read that night. In most of the stories, the tales seemed to be just like all the other children’s stories Alice had ever read except that whereas in most stories the plot was centred around some mystery or focused towards the solution of particular problems, in these stories the main event was sexual and the plots were concerned in how these sexual events came to take place and what these sexual encounters entailed.

In the world of Honore L’Oeuf, sex was always genial, ‑ never violent nor disturbing, ‑ was always desired and never complicated by after‑effects such as pregnancy or venereal disease or worse. Rape was unheard of, “No” was always an accepted response to sexual advance and all the children had very attractive bodies and larger‑than‑life sex‑drives.

Alice found the stories very erotic ‑ much more so than all the pornography or erotica she had seen for the attention of older people. Perhaps it was because it was designed to satisfy the desires and fantasies of pre‑pubescents rather than of adults who pretended to already know it all.

She also found it arousing that in none of the pictures did anyone wear any clothes. This, as Blanche explained, was because in Brook it was normal not to wear clothes ‑ and indeed not wearing clothes wasn’t considered a sexual thing to do at all. Alice liked what she heard about Brook and she was very soon hinting to Blanche and Dinah that what she would like to do very soon would be to go on holiday to Brook.

“But of course sweetest,” said Blanche giving Alice such a sweet little kiss on the mouth. “But remember ‑ no clothes!”