Annie Besant was due to go to stay with her parents in Spain for the long summer holidays and Roxana to spend her time in the North Country at her parent’s ancestral home - a place she loved to be and dearly wished her best friend to see for herself.

“There’s this huge lake in the middle of our estate and the most enchanting island in the middle of it,” said Roxana. “One day I’m going to row over to it and explore it, and I’d so love you to walk over it with me. I know it’s a magical place and we’d be so happy there!” She giggled at this and Annie stared at her, for once puzzled at her friend.

Annie was looking forward to seeing her mother and father again, but not as much as she would have thought all those months ago when she had been tearfully parted from them for the first time. As soon as she had caught Roxana’s eye and they had both laughed together over some silly thing they had both long since forgotten about, she’d immediately lost all feelings of loneliness. The two had done everything together ever since. The “Siamese Twins” was how they had come to be known by all the other girls, many of whom were jealous that these two should be so obviously happy together when they were still terribly homesick.

Every year it was the same. Annie’s parents insisted that she spend the holidays with them, despite her pleas to be allowed to stay with Roxana at her home. They both came to dread these separations, eagerly looking forward to the beginning of term and being together again

The couple never wavered in their friendship all through their time at school. Despite the rivalry between them as they competed for all the top academic and sporting honors (pretty evenly shared) their love for each other only grew, but, since Annie was never to see Roxana’s home; the subject of the magical island in the lake was never mentioned again and she almost forgot all about it, except for a residual memory at the back of her mind.

Finally, the two - eighteen years old by now - walked arm in arm through the school gates for the last time. They missed the old place and both shed a tear. Only one tear though! After all, they were still in each other’s company and had the long vacation ahead of them and were both going to explore the Continent as the most glamorous backpackers ever to wander the Earth together! And, at the end of their tour, Annie was at last to see her friend’s home. This last was Roxana’s most happy thought as they set off on their journey.

By the time they had reached Dover and Roxana had collected a letter from the local Post Office, containing a generous cheque from her parents and Annie admitted that she had been similarly provided for by her doting mother and father, their resolve to rough it for the next six weeks began to weaken! They booked into a medium-priced hotel in Montmartre rather than the Youth Hostel that had been their original intended resting place. Their first night in Paris was spent wandering around that very cosmopolitan area, Le Butte Montmartre and its immediate environs.

As they were wandering together along the Boulevard Clichy, Roxana started shaking with laughter. “You know most of the Bluebell Girls are English, don’t you Annie? Maybe we could get ourselves a summer job there!”

“Don’t be silly! That’s too much like hard work! I saw a Programme about it once. Those girls are worked till they drop. Fine holiday that would be! Now being a stripper at that club over there, for instance, that sounds a lot easier!”

The establishment Annie was referring to was one of many such clubs the couple had passed. They had been amazed at the number of such places and the generally debauched atmosphere of this area. Both had dined and wined well and were in a mood of alcohol induced adventurism. As if they had both been convinced together that they were about to embark on a new career, they headed tipsily towards the entrance.

“It’s not that easy, Roxana,” whispered Annie as the pair watched the gyrating ladies on the small stage in the smoke-filled room. They were the only two girls in the audience in the half-filled auditorium. The male customers had hardly noticed when the couple took their seats, being too interested in watching the succession of young ladies coming onto the stage and disrobing to the sound of loud music.

“No,” answered Roxana, “but it looks fun! Look at the way all those creeps can`t take their eyes of them even for a second. I`d fancy that kind of attention, even if it is a bit scary.”

After an hour or so the pair began to feel sleepy and made their way out and began to think about getting back to the hotel. A few yards along the street, they were overtaken by a middle aged and smartly dressed man. “Young ladies! You are English, Ours? I can always tell! The lovely complexion you get in that terrible climate! I hope you liked our little show?”

“Very much!” said Annie. “How much do those ladies get paid for a night’s work?”

“Two hundred Francs an hour, Mademoiselle. Some girls get more if the clients tip them and sometimes, they do favors for our best customers. You two - I would pay you much more. You are both marvelous, such wonderful looks. But I see you are two such very nice girls and do not need the money anyway. I wish you both `bon unit’.”

Before he slipped back to his business and the cares of life which seemed to sit so lightly on his shoulders, he handed both girls a card, bearing his telephone number and address. “Call me in the morning if you are interested, Mon cherries.”

They were both exhausted after their first exciting night in Paris. They fell asleep immediately. When consciousness was finally restored to them, the sun was shining through the window. Roxana was the first to stir, mainly because the bright morning rays were falling right onto her face. She covered her eyes with her hands and sat up. When she was properly awake, she got out of bed, looking across to the still comatose Annie. Finally, she went over and gently shook her friend’s shoulders, feeling how warm they were under her hands.

“Come on lazybones! We’ve got a whole day ahead this city. Don’t let’s waste a single precious second!”

After a continental breakfast in the small dining room, they made their way on foot in the general direction of the river, intending to visit Notre Dame Cathedral. An earnest looking and bespectacled English youth bumped into them on the way and they soon fell into conversation with him after laughingly accepting his embarrassed apologies.

This learned young man advised the pair to make a visit to the Sainte Chappelle as well as Notre Dame. “Quite honestly, I think it far more beautiful. Make sure you go upstairs to the upper chapel. You won’t regret it”

They asked him to go along with them, being amused at his earnestness and charmed by his obviously good nature. He agreed. As they found out more about each other, it transpired that he was at present working in the city for the Paris branch of a British bank and was due to return home in a few weeks.

Before the conversation could proceed further (he was about to ask them what they did) the trio turned around to investigate the cause of a sudden commotion behind them.

The disturbance was being caused by a pair of girls, both young plump and pretty in a bouncy, large-breasted kind of way. The bounciness of their breasts was plain for all to see (even their short-sighted new friend) since both girls were naked, save for the fact that one was wearing a pair of loose-fitting sandals one of which fell off her fleshy little foot as they watched. The flying streaker paused only to disengage herself from the other sandal and then put on a spurt to catch up with her companion. Soon they were both out of sight and relative calm returned to the Boulevard Magenta.

“Does that happen a lot around here?” asked Annie of the young man. “And what’s your name? I’m Annie and this is Roxana, by the way.”

“I’m Francis, but mostly I get to be called Frank. And, no, it doesn’t happen every day!”

“What do you want us to call you?” asked Roxana.

“Actually, I prefer Francis”

“OK! Francis it is! Glad to meet you, Francis old chap! I think we need a coffee after all that excitement - not that it`s all that exciting for us - not in our job.” Roxana nudged Annie in the ribs as she said this and winked.

Francis said he had been about to ask them what job they did, if any, before the irruption of the daring young ladies onto the scene.

As they sat in the pavement café, Roxana said, “As a matter of fact we’re a pair of exotic dancers at a club in the Avenue Clichy. We start there tonight. Today we`re just having a bit of a culture experience before the hard grind of work takes over. You must come and see us doing our stuff sometime. We`re much better to look at that that flabby pair back there! Not such enormous breasts perhaps, but not as many rolls of flab either!”

Annie had to avoid meeting her friend’s eyes at this. She was fighting hard to control her mirth at the whopping untruth Roxana had just delivered to this delightful but obviously naïve young fellow. They chatted for a few minutes, trying to think of convincing things to tell the goggle-eyed Francis about their fictional job, and then resumed their walk to the Île de la Cite and its impressive collection of mediaeval buildings.

They were impressed by the scale of the cathedral but had to agree with Francis that the Sainte Chappelle was an amazing experience, especially the incredible stained glass on the upper floor.

Francis excused himself after they emerged into the courtyard of the Palais de Justice, explaining that he needed to be back at work in the afternoon. The still mischievous Roxana handed him a slip of paper on which she had scribbled the address of the club at which he believed them to work. Annie spotted this and her heart sank. She guessed what was going on inside that red-haired head and didn’t know whether to feel afraid or very, very excited!

“I’ll really miss you two when I go home tomorrow. I hope you both enjoy the rest of your time in France. Why not try a week or two at that nudist island - you know the one - it’s called Île du Levant? You should be used to baring your bodies by now, after your weeks at that joint and you must both be loaded after all the lovely cash you’ve both taken!”

Annie, Roxana and Francis were having a café au lait at the same café they had paused at a few weeks ago - the day they had first bumped into dear old Francis and when the girls had taken the decision to take up the offer of a job as performers at a striptease joint. Francis had been their most loyal admirer over the weeks, happily taking up the chance of free admission as a friend of two of the most popular artistes.

“You two really came on over the weeks, but oh, you were pretty hopeless on the first couple of nights you worked there! Only those fabulous bodies and Annie’s black hair and mysterious eyes saved you from being a total disaster,” said the by now knowledgeable Francis, a sophisticated connoisseur of the first order after his weeks of inspecting the bare bodies and assessing the routines of numerous young ladies!

The pair had long ago confessed to their friend that they had lied to him on that first day, and that their change of career had been a spur of the moment decision, inspired purely by a sense of mischief, which both had regretted for a while after he had left them outside the Sainte Chappelle.

Immediately after parting from Francis, Annie had exasperatedly turned on her laughing friend, “You mad bitch! Telling him we work at that place and then handing him the address! You’re absolutely serious about working there too, aren’t you?”

“Why ever not, Annie? As long as the punters can only look and not touch! They can look at me as much as they like! And the money sounds very generous! Just think what we could do with it - no more third-class hotels for us!”

And so, they had called the owner of the club and been invited round for an audition. He’d professed himself satisfied with their appearance, but told them they must work hard to improve their act. The first week was full of rehearsals which took up the whole day and they soon began to doubt the wisdom of their madcap decision. Once they’d developed the few skills involved, they were able to relax, having most of the day free to roam the city after finally waking after their late nights, writhing and squirming away on the tiny stage.

They had both received numerous offers from the clientele mostly involving nocturnal visits to their homes. It had been tiresome at times to fend them off, but they had succeeded in retaining their virtue despite many persuasive and wistful efforts to deprive them of it! Most of the clients at the club had been pretty awful types anyway, dividing equally between sad middle-aged men and young drunks out on the town. It had been an experience, though, and something to tell the other girls about at finishing school!

Although shaving had not been insisted upon, most of the other girls’ genitalia being already thus borne, our heroines’ refusal to go this far had caused some disappointment in the heart of the otherwise satisfied Jules Lebrun. They soon appreciated, however, that it was in the vernacular, `de rigueur’ for their routine to include plenty of time to allow a proper inspection by the audience of their pudenda, with them fondling and massaging their womanhood suggestively as the watchers reacted in their various ways. At first, they’d both felt embarrassed and not a little soiled at this, but the satisfying feel of the banknotes that Jules pressed into their eager and willing palms every night soon served to overcome these scruples.

For some reason, they’d never developed any particular friendships with the other girls, some of whom seemed to resent the English pair’s popularity and fresh good looks, but relations had only once degenerated into downright unpleasantness and this was on their first night when three or four of the other ladies had waylaid them on the way back to the hotel. The efficient and very enthusiastic relish this alarmingly fit couple had demonstrated in dealing with the attack, leaving two of their assailants too bruised to be fit for duty for a week, had convinced the rest of the regular performers to leave the pair alone. At the end of their stint there was even a certain amount of very grudging respect for them both. They were certainly a very striking pair, in more ways than one!

“What are clothes, Annie? I seem to remember the word somewhere at the back of my mind, months and months ago before we came to this heaven together!”

Annie turned onto her side and looked at her friend’s naked body, tanned now a deep brown, just like her own, after all these weeks spending the proceeds of their lucrative employment as Parisian strippers.

“We’ll need to get used to them again soon enough, my sweet; tomorrow, in fact. Your parents must be frantic about you by this time and so must mine!”

It was halfway through September now and the pair of school friends had been in this nudist resort in the South of France since leaving their jobs on the “Stage” towards the end of August. Their good and bespectacled friend Francis had joined them for a week, but had just returned to England and all the miseries of autumn, whence the pair Knew that they must take themselves soon enough.

They’d immensely enjoyed the long summer vacation, the first they had spent together in all the years of their deepening friendship. These last weeks on the Île du Levant had been especially precious to them both. As Annie had implied in her question, they had worn not a stitch of clothing for the whole of their time here, even during a short cool and rainy spell of two days’ duration, and the idea of a return to normal living was hard to come to terms with. Tomorrow, though, they would have to come to terms!

They reviewed together the events of the past summer.

“I liked the bit when those other girls jumped us and we chased them off with a flea in their ear!” said Annie, her eyes shining as she relived the occasion again.

“Oh, yes! Pity there weren’t a couple more of them - enough to give us a bit more of a challenge, though.”

“Perhaps. But then we might have brought the entire show to a halt if we’d damaged any more of them. As it was, we were all on overtime for a fortnight until those two came back. Funny thing - I really liked them after that.”

They remained silent for some minutes, reliving those exciting few minutes, when the Parisian night air had resonated to the crack of English fists on French faces and the thud of Anglo-Saxon knees into Gallic abdomens. They both wriggled with contentment on their respective beach mats. Yes, they had certainly re-fought the Battle of Waterloo on that occasion!