Blair

Blair reads a guest the way market traders read the morning, in one correct glance, and whatever the room needs first, talk or quiet or a lamp moved, appears.

De Pijp suits Blair because it never quite closes, and neither does her curiosity. She is twenty-seven, tall enough to use her height in the long strokes, and possessed of the driest sense of humour on the southern half of the roster, deployed sparingly, always on target, usually in the first ten minutes while the oil warms. Her particular gift is calibration. The nervous get gentled, the talkative get an audience, the exhausted get silence and weight, and none of them ever notice a decision being made. Sensual and oil work are her mainstays, the pair format her occasional theatre. The regulars she keeps, she keeps for years.

Blair 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.