Caroline

Couples who reserve a sailing twelve months out arrive with a plan for every day except the one before it. Caroline is twenty-nine and fills that last evening without making an occasion of it, which is usually what two people who have been organising for months are after. De Pijp is her quarter, noisy until one and no use for sleeping, so she reads a still hotel room as a relief rather than as a novelty. Spanish or English in the thread, whichever one reaches her first. Brunette, and firm about the limits she names in the opening minute, which do not move again afterwards.

Caroline 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.