The part of the evening that starts at half past ten
At about twenty five past ten every door between Bow Street and the Aldwych lets out at the same moment, and the streets fill again for an hour. That hour is the reason this engagement exists. Most guests take three hours at £700, covering a drink while the crowd thins, a late table if you want one, and wherever the night goes after that. Two hours at £500 handles a single good bar and the walk back to your room.
The geography helps. Leicester Square is four minutes west of the Piazza and keeps going long after the theatres go dark, Charing Cross puts the river at the bottom of the hill, and Chinatown is the reliable answer at one in the morning. All of it reads off the same rail as any other evening, and nothing is added because the hour happens to be late.
Who suits this call
A shortlist rather than the whole company. If none of these is free on your night, the desk will name three more who carry the same evening just as well.
Where three hours go after a curtain
Half an hour in the bar of wherever you are staying while the pavements clear, because leaving at twenty past ten means walking out through an entire audience. An hour somewhere with a proper cocktail list, a low ceiling and no queue at the door at eleven. An hour at a table, since the late kitchens around here are better than their reputations suggest. Then a walk, which in this postcode is the best part of it: an emptied market, a lit portico, and almost nobody about.
Doors, and how to get through them
She is company, not a membership card, and it is worth saying so plainly. A companion here cannot sign you into a private club and would rather not pretend otherwise. What she does bring is knowing which rooms take two people at eleven on a Thursday, which bars keep seats at the counter, and which door is not worth the walk. Anywhere that genuinely needs booking is a table you arrange in your own name that afternoon, which takes two minutes.
The slower version of a late night
Not every late night is a loud one. There is jazz most nights within ten minutes of the Piazza, a piano bar on the river road that starts early and runs late, and a handful of hotel bars around Covent Garden where a real conversation at midnight is entirely possible. Guests who have done the loud version once tend to book the slow one the second time, and three hours of it is the same £700 as anything else.
One in the morning, and after
Chinatown is five minutes from the Piazza and still cooking when everything else has stopped, which makes it the honest answer to what happens next. Past that, a night either ends or becomes a ten hour booking, and the second of those is a decision better made before midnight than at two. Extending on the night is a message to the desk, at the ordinary rate, with an answer that depends entirely on what her morning looks like.
Names for a long night
Molly is fastening an earring while the final curtain is still coming down, which tells you when her evening actually begins. Angelika is the calmest person in any room on the Aldwych at half past seven and is still that way at two. Roxi disarms a table in about four minutes flat. Tiffany notices small things and mentions them three hours later, and Jasmin improves every room she walks into. Two of those five are raven haired.
Getting home, and what it costs
Nothing, anywhere inside Zones 1 and 2, because the travelling is already counted in the figure and she arranges her own way home at the end of it. Further out than that, the cab is priced both ways in the first reply. The last trains from Charing Cross go earlier than most guests expect, which matters to you rather than to her, and is the one practical reason to decide before midnight whether the night is ending or carrying on.
This evening, answered
She will know which rooms take two people at eleven without a booking, which is far more useful. What she will not do is pretend to membership of a club she does not belong to, and no companion here signs a guest in anywhere.
Not really. Bookings run to three or four in the morning regularly enough. A night that keeps going past that is usually rewritten as a ten hour booking before midnight, which costs less than stacking hours on and gives you the morning as well.
One table, if you want to eat, and in your own name. Everything else in this quarter after ten is walk in, and the shortlist of doors worth trying is the part she brings to the evening herself.
Send the desk a message and you will know within a quarter of an hour, at the same rate as the rest of the night. Whether it is yes depends on what her morning holds, and a no is said plainly rather than dressed up as something else.
Written for this evening
Other evenings
Call the stage door
One message names the evening you want and the desk answers inside a quarter of an hour, at any point on the clock. Tell us the day, the hour, how long you would like and where she should come, and the rest is written down for you.
Running order
- Half hour
- Beginners
- YouCurtain up
- Interval
- Final bow