Nadia

Nadia says perhaps a few dozen words an hour and fills the room anyway, a gravity that makes silence the luxury option. Twenty-seven, of the Jordaan.

Presence is the untrainable thing, and Nadia has it in reserves: she enters quietly, moves deliberately, and somehow reorganises the room's whole atmosphere around her stillness. Guests who talk through every massage of their lives find themselves, with her, electing not to, the silence in her sessions is not an absence but a substance, and it is doing half the work. She is twenty-seven, dark-haired, at home in the Jordaan's hush. Russian is the sea she swims in; her English is spare, correct, and warmer than its word count. Tantra and the long sensual hours are her territory, and the overnight with Nadia is spoken of by the regulars in the tone reserved for serious recommendations.

Nadia 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.