Colleen

In her own hours

Conversation is where Colleen begins, and she talks like somebody told all her life that she talks well. A hotel room stops feeling like one four minutes in.

The Jordaan is half a village and she treats it as one, which is exactly why she lives there. That first fifteen minutes matters more than it sounds: a great deal of this happens in it, and she is never awkward. At twenty-five she has the confidence for the long arrangements - three hours, the whole night, the booking that quietly becomes a second one the next evening - and equally to say when something shorter would serve you better. English is all she works in, and she makes no apology for needing nothing else.

Colleen 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.