The therapists who work with couples ashore in Amsterdam

The grid above is the full roster rather than a shortlist for your evening ashore. Twenty-three is the number on the books; how many of them are free on any given date is a smaller number, and it moves with the calendar rather than with the house.

Nobody here is placed on a shift. That is the one thing worth understanding before writing, because it explains why a name and a date are two separate questions. A date is usually easy. A particular name on a fixed date, with a sailing behind it that cannot be moved, deserves a longer run-up.

Asking for a date, or asking for a name

Keep them apart in the first message and the thread settles in one exchange rather than four. A couple with a departure on Saturday morning has a Friday evening that cannot slide, so the useful message gives the evening, the length, whether one therapist or two, and then says whether the name is fixed or open. The reply names who is free for those hours. Where the woman you asked for is not among them, the reply says so plainly and gives the names that are, and what the two of you do with that stays your decision.

Languages, for a room where two people are already tired

English appears on all twenty-three profiles, which matters at the end of a travel day conducted in a second language. Spanish is on five, Russian and Portuguese on two each, and single speakers cover Italian, French, Dutch, Romanian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Croatian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Latvian and Lithuanian. Three women carry a third language as well. The profiles list them without ranking them, because a ranking would tell you nothing useful about a conversation in a hotel room.

Where a journey to your room actually begins

There is no premises for anyone to leave from, so each journey starts wherever she lives. The twenty-three are spread over four districts, with ten in the centre, six in De Pijp, four in Oud-Zuid and three in the Jordaan. Across a city this compact that usually puts somebody within reach of a room near the water.

It also explains why that window never shifts about. Forty to sixty minutes from an agreed booking to a knock, the same figure in every central district, whatever the hour. A room at a Schiphol airport hotel on a fly-in day sits outside that window and is arranged instead, with the length of her journey agreed with you before the hour is fixed.

What a profile carries

Her age, her languages, the district her journey starts from, the techniques on her file, and photographs of her published with her agreement. Ages on this roster run from twenty-two to twenty-nine. The rate table repeats on every profile because the tariff does not change from one woman to another: for two guests it is 360 euros an hour with one therapist and 720 with a therapist each, 540 and 1,080 for ninety minutes, 720 and 1,440 for two hours, and 2,500 or 5,760 for the eight hour block.

Which bookings she accepts is hers to settle, and she need give no reason for turning one down. She sets the limits of what a session includes, states them at the start of the visit, and may end a visit at any point. Everyone on these pages is twenty-one or over, and so is everyone in the room when she arrives.

Booking one of them for two of you

Put the name on the first line, with the district, the evening, the length and the words one therapist or two underneath it. Say plainly that there are two of you in the room and that both of you have agreed to the booking, because that is checked at the door rather than assumed from a thread. The booking page sets out the order the messages run in, and the questions page answers what a first-time couple usually asks next.