Company after the final curtain in Leicester Square, WC2H

On the square, the Hippodrome anchors the north east corner in a 1900 variety theatre that now deals cards until dawn, its terracotta dome lit above Cranbourn Street. Charing Cross Road runs west of it past Wyndham's and the Phoenix, and Leicester Place cuts north to the church of Notre Dame de France, where Cocteau painted three murals in a fortnight in 1960 and almost nobody who passes the door knows it.

Five minutes north the postcode has forgotten about all that. Monmouth Street bends gently towards the sundial pillar at Seven Dials, Neal Street runs parallel with its shopfronts shuttered by eight, and Earlham Street holds the Donmar behind an unmarked brick wall. This is where guests staying in WC2H actually sleep, and it is why a lobby on Monmouth Street feels an hour away from a lobby on the square when it is in fact four minutes.

Two sorts, matching the two halves. Visitors staying on the square who have come for a screening or a show and want the rest of the evening to have some shape, usually asking late and usually asking for tonight. And guests in the small hotels up towards Seven Dials, who chose them precisely because nothing happens on that street after nine, and who tend to book longer and earlier.

For the first, an hour from £250 or ninety minutes at £400 once the credits roll. For the second, three hours at £700 and four hours with dinner at £900 are the common requests, because the whole point of staying up there is not to hurry.

The Londoner fills the south side of the square with six floors above the pavement and six below it, and the lobby is large enough that an arrival at any hour is simply part of the traffic. The Radisson Blu Edwardian Leicester Square sits on the northern side facing the garden. Four minutes up Monmouth Street, the Covent Garden Hotel is the quiet opposite: a converted French hospital with a drawing room, a fire, a first floor sitting room and a screening room in the basement. Behind the cinemas on Orange Street, the Z is the plain small option for a short stay.

Named as places on a route. Nothing formal connects the house to any of them, and nothing needs to: a companion arrives as your invited guest and takes the lift. The flats above the shops on Monmouth Street and Neal Street work the same way, with a buzzer instead of a desk.

Leicester Square, one minute away at the northern corner, Northern and Piccadilly lines. Piccadilly Circus, three minutes west along Coventry Street, adding the Bakerloo. Charing Cross, four minutes downhill towards the river, with the Kent services above the platforms.

Covent Garden station is a similar four minutes from the Seven Dials end, and on a night when a show has just come down it is often the faster walk. Everything here is Zone 1, so the journey is already inside the figure.

One message carries it: the hour, the length, the address, and the name you have picked, or a line about the evening you want. The answer arrives 10 to 15 minutes later at any point in the night, which in this postcode matters more than in most, because requests here land after eleven more often than not.

The desk matches three details in writing before she leaves, the name the booking sits under, the building, the door. Once they agree, an ordinary evening goes straight onto the sheet. Overnights, events and travel take the same route, with the timings settled in the same thread.

Matinee days are the one occasion needing thought, because two audiences leave the theatres around the square within a few hours of each other and the pavements on Cranbourn Street fill twice. On those days she will meet you inside the lobby rather than at the kerb, and writing in the afternoon avoids the crush entirely. Otherwise a WC2H door is reached inside the hour, often in ten minutes from the Seven Dials side.

22:15, the lights come up and the square is at its most crowded, so the sensible move is north rather than across. 22:30, a table on Monmouth Street or Earlham Street, where two or three kitchens serve until midnight and the rooms are small enough to talk in. 23:45, a last drink in the first floor sitting room of a hotel that looks nothing like the one you walked out of. 00:30, upstairs, with the noise of the square four minutes and one world away.

Ninety minutes at £400 covers the supper. Two hours at £500 is the more comfortable version, three hours at £700 takes it past one in the morning without anybody checking a watch, and ten hours at £1,800 runs to a very late breakfast.

The nearest home address on the list is a two minute walk away. Tina lives inside WC2, knows which shopfront on Monmouth Street used to be what, and is the name to write when the request is late and the answer needs to be yes. Cindy comes over from Chelsea, blonde and wavy haired, and is easy company on a night that began in a cinema. Michelle makes the same journey, taller at 173 cm and better suited to the longer, slower version of the evening.

Every other woman in the company reaches WC2H on the same figures, and the travelling is inside the fee from every home district on the list.

East along Long Acre, Covent Garden and the Piazza begin within three minutes. Downhill to the south, Charing Cross sits at the bottom with Trafalgar Square beside it, and the crescent of Strand and Aldwych follows the river road east from there. North up Charing Cross Road is the junction at Tottenham Court Road. Chinatown and Soho start immediately west of the square and are covered elsewhere. The postcode family is set out on the WC2 page.