Cassandra

Some guests like every part of a trip decided before the suitcase comes out, and they tend to book her early. She lives among the long avenues of Oud-Zuid. She works in Greek and English, and she keeps the talk as brief or as long as the guest wants it. Four hands with a second therapist is a format she takes on for advance bookings, and any booking with two therapists goes ahead with half the fee. Twenty-six, dark-haired, and clear about her limits from the first minute. An hour of four hands is a complete booking on its own, because two pairs of hands fill it from the opening minute, though ninety minutes or two hours suit a guest whose evening has no fixed end. The forty to sixty minutes are counted from the moment the thread says the two women are on their way, exactly as with one therapist. Each of them states her limits at the door, and the limits of either one hold for the whole visit.

Cassandra 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.