Betsy

The deep-night messages tend to find their way to Betsy, and no one has ever heard her sound woken. Old-centre based, unbothered by the hour you keep.

Some people hold the night shift; Betsy inhabits it. She lives in the thick of Centrum, minutes from the big hotels, and the bookings that land at three and four in the morning are hers by preference, she says the city is finally honest at that hour, and she likes her guests the same way. Blonde, quick-handed, difficult to surprise, she runs a session with an economy that first-timers mistake for briskness until the tenth minute proves otherwise. The pressure arrives gradually and then stays for the duration. Czech is her private language; her English is fast, flat and funny. If your evening has gone long, she is the argument for letting it go longer.

Betsy 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.