The therapists who work the quiet hours in Amsterdam

The grid above is the whole roster rather than a shortlist. Twenty-three is the number on the books, and the number free on any given evening is smaller than that, which is why an hour is easier to arrange than a particular person at short notice.

Choosing without a long exchange

Guests who dislike back and forth do one thing differently: they put the alternative in the first message. A line saying which woman you would like and which hour matters more settles the whole thing in a single reply. Left out, it takes three messages to discover that you would rather move the evening than change the name, or the other way round.

Nobody has to choose from the grid at all. A message describing the hour instead of a person is answered the same way, with a name and a figure, and plenty of first bookings are written like that.

Languages, for a guest who is out of words

English is on all twenty-three profiles. After a day conducted in a second language, a third one is where the tiredness shows, so the rest is worth knowing: Russian on four profiles, Dutch on three, French, Spanish and Ukrainian on two each, with single speakers of Czech, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Hungarian, Croatian, Serbian and Latvian. Five women carry a third language.

Where the journeys begin

There is no studio for anyone to leave from, so each journey starts wherever she happens to live. De Pijp holds seven of the roster, the Centrum six, the Jordaan five and Oud-Zuid five. Across a city this compact, somebody is usually near your street.

That is also why the window holds steady at forty to sixty minutes from the agreed hour to a knock at the door, in any central district. The count starts when she is ready to travel rather than when the traffic thins, so an empty evening road does not shorten it. Schiphol and the airport hotels are arranged on their own terms, with the length of the trip talked through and agreed before an hour is held.

What a profile holds

Her age, her languages, the district she sets out from, the techniques on her file, and photographs of her published with her agreement. The figures repeat on every profile because the tariff does not move from one woman to the next, and they run from a single hour for one guest up to the eight hour block. The columns beside them cover a couple, and a second pair of hands. Nothing is added for a Saturday, and nothing for the crossing.

She decides which bookings she accepts and may decline any of them without giving a reason. She decides what a session includes, states her limits before it begins, and may end a visit at any point. Every name on these pages is twenty-one or over, and so is everyone who books one.

Writing about one of them

Her name first, then the address, the hour and the length underneath. Four short lines is a complete message and needs no greeting on top of it. If you saw somebody on an earlier visit and the name has gone, describe the evening instead and it can usually be traced. The booking page sets out the order things happen in, and the questions page covers what tends to be asked afterwards.