Grace

The stairwells are narrow here and Grace has climbed most of them, usually at an hour when the building is asleep. Polish or English, one pace throughout.

It took one winter to settle her in Oud-Zuid, the wide streets, the museums shut by six, the quiet that arrives about ten. She rarely fills a silence that is doing its job, and telling which silences those are is the better half of tantric work. Ninety minutes and two hours are her usual shape, and a longer booking simply gives the quiet more room. The rate of someone's breathing tells her when to change something, and most of the time it tells her not to yet.

Grace 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.