She arrives at your door in WC2, matinee hour or four in the morning
This is the shortest booking on the sheet and much the most frequent one. You give the hotel or the address, the hour you want her there, and the length of the call. The desk comes back with a name, a figure and a time written down. She walks into a lobby on Bow Street, up a stair on Bedford Street or wherever you happen to be, dressed for the particular building she has to cross, usually well inside the hour of the confirmation landing.
The first hour is £250. Ninety minutes runs to £400 and a two hour call to £500, each figure carrying the travelling with it anywhere inside Zones 1 and 2, with every other length set down on the rail. None of it shifts because your message arrives at half past one in the morning, or because the room stands on the river road rather than in a quiet corner of Bloomsbury.
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.
The half hour call: what to send
One message does it, by WhatsApp or by Telegram. Name someone from the company, or give two lines about the evening you picture and let the desk cast it for you. An answer follows inside 10 to 15 minutes carrying her name, the arrival time and the figure. Before she leaves home, the full name the booking sits under and the number on the door go once into that same conversation and nowhere else. She arrives at the minute written down, and your hours start at the door rather than in the cab.
Lobbies, porters and the walk to the lift
Houses in this quarter take arrivals around the clock, and a well dressed woman walking towards the lifts at eleven is part of their ordinary evening. She dresses for the door she is walking through: quiet and tailored for a townhouse room behind the British Museum, a shade more evening for a bar with a pianist in it, plain and unremarkable for a block with a porter on a stool. Two or three houses here ask that late guests are met downstairs. Mention it when you write and she messages from the pavement instead of coming up.
Private addresses, buzzers and night porters
A good share of these calls never involve a hotel at all. Serviced flats around Floral Court, apartments above the shops on Long Acre and the mansion blocks off Southampton Row are visited on identical footing. Where there is no room number, the desk wants the building, the flat, and whichever name the door staff or the entry panel will recognise. Bigger blocks keep somebody downstairs all night, so an arrival at two in the morning is no harder to manage there than a lift and a corridor in a hotel.
One hour, ninety minutes or two
An hour buys a drink and the kind of talk that only happens once the day is over, and most first bookings sit exactly there. Ninety minutes gives the evening a second act: room service perhaps, or a drink downstairs before you come back up. Regulars tend to land on two hours, since at that length the clock stops being a presence in the room. Wanting more time once she is already with you is perfectly ordinary. It is agreed in the chat first, at the same rate as everything else, and depends entirely on what is written behind you on her night.
Three coats already inside the postcode
Tina lives here, is the smallest on the sheet at 158 cm and says yes to short notice more readily than anyone. Nancy lives four streets off the market, golden blonde with blue eyes, and is the easiest company at the close of a punishing week. Karolina keeps a flat three minutes from the Opera House and carries herself well in the grander rooms. From further out, Michelle starts talking somewhere in the lobby, and Roxi can take a flat mood apart in about four minutes. Tina is the one petite name among them.
If the room changes, or the curtain overruns
Moved upstairs by the hotel? Send the new room number and the call is otherwise untouched. Held at a table? She waits fifteen minutes as a matter of course, after which the hour is moved rather than quietly stretched past its end. Three hours of notice or better costs you nothing, inside two hours you owe half, and a door nobody opens costs the whole fee. Every step in order is set out on the booking page, and the desk says all of this out loud before a penny moves.
This evening, answered
Usually inside the hour of the desk confirming in writing, and often nearer twenty minutes for the three women whose front doors are in WC2E. A matinee day, or the ten minutes in which every theatre empties at once, will stretch that, and an afternoon message protects your first choice far better than a late one does.
No. She is your guest, the same as anybody you might ask up for a drink. The one exception is a house that asks for late visitors to be met at reception, and there she writes from the entrance and waits for you rather than going to the desk.
Because anything shorter is a transaction rather than an evening, and this house does not write them. One hour from £250 reads the same at a grand room on the river road as at a townhouse off a garden square, whatever the clock happens to say.
Yes, and a fair few guests prefer it. Once the call is confirmed you can send the whole amount ahead, which leaves nothing to be dealt with when she walks in, and the payment shows under a dull descriptor that gives away nothing about this house.
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