Holborn escorts in WC1V and WC2A, once the courts have gone quiet

Two postcodes carry the district. WC1V runs along High Holborn past the Princess Louise, a Victorian gin palace with etched glass partitions that survived the century intact. WC2A holds Lincoln's Inn Fields, the largest public square in London and the quietest at night, with Sir John Soane's house museum along the northern side, kept exactly as he left it and stacked floor to ceiling with marbles.

Behind the Fields, Carey Street and Star Yard keep a scale that has not changed much since the wigmakers arrived. The Seven Stars has been pouring since the year the Armada sailed and seats perhaps thirty people. Lamb's Conduit Street, five minutes north, turns pedestrian in the evenings and holds the best short row of dining rooms in WC1. None of it performs for visitors, which is precisely the appeal.

Mostly people working to somebody else's timetable. Counsel and consultants in for a case or a deal, staying two or three nights on High Holborn, who finish at nine and want a real evening rather than a minibar. Visitors attending something at Gray's Inn or the Fields who have an obligation at eight in the morning and no interest in a late start. Occasionally a resident from the mansion blocks off Red Lion Square.

Bookings here skew earlier and shorter than in the theatre postcodes. Most weeks run on ninety minutes at £400, or the two hour booking at £500, while the ten hour night at £1,800 goes to anyone who has learned that a seven o'clock start is easier after a good night than a short one.

Rosewood London stands behind a stone arch on High Holborn, built for an insurance company and turned into a courtyard hotel, with Scarfes Bar off the lobby, a fire, a wall of books and a piano most evenings. The Hoxton Holborn sits further west along the same road with a lobby that stays busy until late, useful when you would rather an arrival went unremarked. Club Quarters on the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields is the plain, well placed option for a weeknight. The Montague on the Gardens is eight minutes north into Bloomsbury when WC1V is full.

These are buildings, not affiliations. Nothing formal links them to the house, and nothing needs to: she arrives as your guest and takes the lift. Serviced flats on Bedford Row and the apartments behind Red Lion Square are visited on the same footing.

Holborn, one minute from most of WC1V at the junction of Kingsway and High Holborn, Central and Piccadilly lines. Chancery Lane, five minutes east on the Central, and the better choice for the far end of WC2A or anything towards the Inns.

Both sit deep in Zone 1, so the journey is already inside the figure. The practical note is that Holborn shuts its gates before the last trains on some nights, which matters to a guest going home rather than to a companion arriving by cab.

The desk is staffed around the clock, and a message sent at eleven gets the same answer in 10 to 15 minutes as one sent at six. Give four things: when you would like her, how long for, the address, and a name you have already picked or a few lines describing the evening you have in mind.

One check goes out first, the name the booking is held in, the building and the room, matched a single time on WhatsApp or Telegram and used for nothing afterwards. After that single check the evening is fixed, for a room or a residence alike. A night that ends at breakfast, an event or travel beyond the city is best raised a day or two ahead, since the Inns empty early on a Friday and so does the choice of company.

Arrivals in WC1V and WC2A usually run inside the hour from confirmation, a touch quicker from the Piazza than from anywhere else.

19:30, a drink in the panelled room off the lobby on High Holborn, low lit and slow, with a piano somewhere behind the conversation. 20:15, ten minutes on foot to Lamb's Conduit Street and a table where the wine list is longer than the menu and nobody hurries the second bottle. 22:00, a nightcap in the small bar on Carey Street where the ceiling is low and the regulars are barristers who have taken their collars off. 22:45, back across the Fields to the hotel with the plane trees moving overhead.

Three hours at £700 carries that comfortably. Two hours at £500 covers the dinner alone, and ninety minutes at £400 is the common request when the meeting overran. Four hours with dinner in it, £900, suits the night before a decision rather than the night after one.

Nobody on the list keeps a home address inside Holborn, so arrivals here come from the Piazza and from further west. Karolina walks it in about ten minutes from Covent Garden and is well suited to a formal evening with clients in it. Tina lives inside WC2 and takes short notice more happily than anyone else on the call sheet. Liana travels in from Marylebone, unhurried and easy to talk to after a day of being talked at, and Sonya comes over from Knightsbridge for the guest who wants conversation rather than commentary.

Everyone else in the company travels to Holborn on the same figures, with the journey inside the fee.

South west down Kingsway lies Covent Garden and the theatres. South east, Fleet Street begins where the Strand ends, with Strand and Aldwych covering the crescent in between. North across Theobalds Road, Bloomsbury starts at the first garden square, and the walk up Gray's Inn Road reaches Kings Cross in about twenty minutes. The postcode family is mapped on the WC2 page.