Beatrice

Talk at the door, then almost none: the order matters and Beatrice keeps to it. Italian or English, settled in the first minute by the reply a client gives.

Evenings near the Concertgebouw run late and quiet, and she has arranged her working life around that. Tantric work, as she practises it, is mostly restraint, fewer changes, longer holds, nothing introduced for the sake of variety. She listens for the moment someone stops making conversation out of politeness, and treats that as the real beginning. She gives the second half of an hour the same patience as the first, so the two halves weigh the same. The long middle she wants will just fit inside ninety minutes; two hours gives her more of it.

Beatrice 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.