Clementine

In the margin

The dark months change the shape of an evening in this city well before the cold gets round to it. Clementine, twenty-eight, works almost entirely inside them and has given up pretending to prefer summer. Her bag carries more towels in December than in June and the oil goes into warm water the moment she is through the door. French and English, neither of them rushed. A guest who has spent the day in the wet and the dark usually wants the first ten minutes to be nothing but warmth, and she does that first, without having to be asked for it.

Clementine 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.