The therapists behind massages in Amsterdam, week after week

The grid above is the full roster rather than tonight's availability. Nobody on it works to a rota set by the house. Each woman decides which days and hours she keeps, and those hours shift from week to week in the same way anyone's do, which matters more to a guest here for two months than to one here for two nights.

Asking for the same woman again

Long stays produce regular guests, and regular guests tend to ask for a name. That is simple to do: put the name in the first line of the message, with the date, the hour and the length. The reply says whether she is free at that time. If she is not, it says who is, and the choice of whether to take that, move the hour or wait for another evening stays entirely with you.

No woman is held for any guest between bookings, and there is no arrangement by which one becomes yours for the length of a stay. Every booking is agreed on its own, and each time she decides whether to take it.

Where the roster lives

There are no premises, so every journey starts from wherever she lives. Eight women start from the centre, six from Oud-Zuid, five from the Jordaan and four from De Pijp. A flat taken for a season in any of those neighbourhoods is often close to someone, but the arrival window does not depend on it: forty to sixty minutes anywhere in central Amsterdam, counted from the moment the booking is confirmed. A hotel at Schiphol is arranged separately, with the journey time agreed first.

Languages on the roster

English appears on all twenty-three profiles. Between them the women also speak Russian, Italian, Romanian, Ukrainian, French, Spanish, Dutch, Croatian, Czech, Lithuanian and Portuguese. Someone who has spent six weeks conducting meetings in a second language sometimes finds it restful to hear a third, and the profile says which ones each woman uses.

What each profile carries

Her age, her languages, the district she starts from, the techniques on her file and photographs of her, published with her agreement. Every profile repeats the same rates table, because the figure does not depend on who you book: one guest with one therapist pays 180 euros for an hour, 270 for ninety minutes, 360 for two hours, 540 for three and 1,250 for the eight hour overnight. Couples and two-therapist bookings read off the other columns of that table.

She chooses which bookings to accept and may decline any of them without a reason. She sets the limits of a session, says what they are at the start of the visit and may end it at any point. The booking page covers what to write, and the techniques page covers what each format asks of a flat.