Colleen

In her own hours

Twenty-five and red-haired, working out of the Jordaan, where the last of the evening noise is a bicycle bell going over a bridge. She writes the way she speaks, in lines of six or seven words, and she does not mind at all being answered in fewer. The hour runs slowly and without commentary attached to it. English is what she has, and she spends it carefully.

Colleen 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.