Banks

The Jordaan is narrow water crossed by narrow bridges, and Banks knows which of them to take at which hour so that a knock lands when it was promised rather than near it. Twenty-four, and calm about the part of this that guests find hardest to raise: a question put plainly gets a plain answer, and a question circled around for ten minutes gets patience and very little else. What a session holds is settled by her, and she says where her lines run in the first minute, in short words, before anything is unrolled. French and English are both there in the room, and she moves between them without being asked twice.

Banks 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.