Karina

Coat off, shoes off, the lamp moved before anything else: she arranges a room in under a minute and then behaves as though she has all the time in the world. Her hands are strong and her sense of pace is steady, a single slow rhythm held for twenty minutes without turning monotonous, the gel topped up before it can dry. Latvian, Russian and English are all equally hers, and the Russian is the one she swears in. A few streets from the Dam is where she sleeps, and the bookings that run all night are the ones she would rather have.

Karina 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.