Thirty, three languages, and long enough in Oud-Zuid to know which evenings of a conference week are the ones genuinely free.

French, Dutch and English, which covers most of what gets spoken across a week of meetings and the dinners attached to them. At thirty she has the patience for the partner who arrives back still answering messages and wants a quarter of an hour before anything begins. The streets she lives in empty early, and the apartments in them are large enough that two guests and a therapist are never in one another's way. She would rather have a little notice, because an evening chosen carefully out of a printed week works better than one grabbed at the end of it. The limits are hers, named before the session, and they hold for the pair of you.

Constance 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.