Betsy

The Centrum on the last night of December is a place of closed bridges, police lines and fireworks let off from every second doorway. Betsy lives inside all of it, which means she knows by six o'clock which routes will still be open near midnight and which will not. Guests who want the hour after the countdown agree it with her early in the day, never on the night itself. She works in Czech and English, keeps her voice low when the street outside is anything but, and reaches for erotic oil or a sensual session when the night is loud enough already. She is twenty-three and in no hurry to be anywhere else once she has arrived.

Betsy 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.