Brielle

In the margin

Weather lands hard on the old centre and drains off it slowly. Brielle, red-haired and twenty-two, keeps a stack of her own towels for the guest who walked the last stretch without an umbrella, on the reasoning that nothing useful happens while a person is still cold through. She has French, Dutch and English and lets a room settle on one of them without making an announcement of it. Body to body in a storm comes down to warmth and a closed door, and she says that without decorating it. What the session holds is hers to decide, and she decides it out loud before it starts.

Brielle 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.