Caroline

Caroline is the argument for experience: twenty-nine, a decade of hands behind her, and a De Pijp session so assured it feels inevitable.

Everything about Caroline runs a few degrees warmer than the city around her, the oil, the room by the time she has been in it ten minutes, the register of the hour itself. It is an instinct she has never seen reason to correct. Guests from cold conferences and colder flights book her the way travellers book a fireplace. She settled in De Pijp years ago and works with the calm of someone with nothing left to prove and no interest in proving it. Her Spanish spills out when she is pleased; her English takes its time and lands precisely. The two- and three-hour bookings are where she is happiest, and it is mutual.

Caroline 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.