Claire

Claire runs on railway-clock time: the confirmation means the minute, the hour means the full hour. French, German and English, out of De Pijp.

Precision gets a cold reputation and Claire spends every session correcting it. Yes, she arrives on the minute; yes, the towels are folded to edges and the oil is at the temperature she intends; but the point of all that order, in her hands, is the freedom it buys, an hour where nothing snags, nothing interrupts, and attention has nowhere to go but you. She is twenty-six and trilingual in the useful way where the language changes without the warmth changing. De Pijp is her base and the southern hotels know her step. Her pressure work is the most consistent on the roster, stroke to stroke, hour to hour. Clockwork, she says, is simply good manners.

Claire 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.