Nara

In the margin

One bag, packed for the season rather than for the address: towels through the cold half of the year, fewer of them in summer, and a small lamp because the fitting screwed to a ceiling is rarely the light a wet evening needs. Nara is blonde, twenty-three, and organised in a way that takes about a minute to become obvious. Lithuanian and English, neither of them decorative. The old centre is loud in the rain and silent the moment a door closes, and she works with that rather than against it. What the hour holds is her decision and she states it plainly before anything begins.

Nara 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.