Beatrice

The long avenues behind the museums go slack between one and four, when the schools have not finished and the offices have not emptied. She likes working inside that gap, and says a hotel floor in the same hours behaves much the same way. Erotic oil is what she takes out on most afternoons, since it asks nothing of a room beyond a bed, a warm radiator and somewhere to hang a towel. She speaks slowly by habit rather than by effort, which helps at the end of a day that has been hard work to follow. At twenty-six she would rather book ninety minutes and use all of it than book an hour and hurry through it.

Beatrice decides which bookings she takes and may decline any of them; she sets the limits for what a session includes, says what they are, and may end a visit at any point, as the terms set out.