Cassandra

Patience with her is not a performance: she will spend twenty minutes on a back that does not need it, because the rest of the hour is better for it. The long apartments off the Apollolaan, with floors you can actually work on, are where she usually is, and the gel is warm before she has taken her coat off. In Greek she is affectionate and faintly imperious; in English she is plainer and much funnier. She takes more of the overnight bookings than anyone on the roster, and at twenty-six she wakes up well, which is rarer than it sounds.

Cassandra 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.