Clara

Clara will not tell you she is good at this; she begins, and the hour turns out longer and quieter than expected. Hungarian or English, few words in either.

The languages get sorted out in the first minute and then largely set aside. She lives in the old centre, a few doors from a tram stop, and most of the hotels she is asked to are a walk or a short ride away. At twenty-two she is already unhurried in a way most people take years to learn, and she is never somebody with one eye on her coat. Given a slow stretch of breathing she will stay with it far longer than a client expects, on the grounds that there is nowhere to be getting to.

Clara 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.