Strand and Aldwych escorts in WC2R, between the Savoy and the river

Three theatres stand within sixty seconds of each other on the Aldwych curve, and the Lyceum sits just behind them on Wellington Street with a portico wide enough to shelter a whole queue. The Savoy Theatre is stranger and better: its entrance is inside the hotel's own forecourt, so the audience and the guests use the same piece of tarmac, which makes the half hour before a curtain the busiest ninety seconds in WC2R.

South of the road the register changes completely. Somerset House opens its courtyard to fountains in summer and a rink in winter, and the river terrace behind it looks straight across at the South Bank. Below that the Embankment gardens run east towards Temple, dark, quiet and entirely empty by ten, which is the best two minutes of walking in the postcode.

This is the hotel end of the circuit, so most bookings begin in a room rather than at a restaurant. Visitors staying a week on the river side who want dinner and company without leaving the postcode. Guests in town for something at the Aldwych or the Lyceum, taking four hours so the evening has a beginning and an end. And business travellers working in the City who deliberately book west of Fleet Street because nobody they know is staying here.

Dinner and a performance at £900 leads in WC2R, with the ten hour night at £1,800 close behind, largely because the rooms are worth staying in until morning.

The Savoy stands at the end of its own forecourt, art deco on the river side and Edwardian at the front, with the American Bar upstairs and the darker Beaufort Bar across the hall. One Aldwych occupies the old newspaper building on the corner, bright, contemporary and quiet on the upper floors. The Waldorf Hilton sits in the middle of the crescent with a palm court under a glass roof. ME London is four minutes east along the Strand, all white stone and sharp angles, with a rooftop bar looking west over the rooftops. The Strand Palace is the plainer, larger house on the north side.

Addresses only. Nothing contractual joins the house to a single one of them, and nothing needs to: companions walk in as invited guests. The flats above the Strand and the apartments on Savoy Hill are visited identically.

Temple, three minutes below the crescent on the Embankment, Circle and District lines, and the quiet way in. Covent Garden, five minutes north up Wellington Street on the Piccadilly. Charing Cross, five minutes west along the Strand, with the Bakerloo and Northern beneath and the Kent services above.

All of it is Zone 1, so the travelling is already inside the figure. Temple closes earlier than the others on Sundays, which changes nothing about an arrival by cab.

Send the hour, the length, the address and either a name or a few words about the company you would like. The desk is staffed through the night and an answer follows in 10 to 15 minutes naming her availability and the figure. Theatre nights on the crescent deserve an afternoon message, because a seven thirty curtain fixes everything that follows it.

Before she crosses the forecourt, the desk matches the booking name against the hotel and the room, once, in writing. After that the evening at a hotel or a private address is fixed on the sheet. Ten hour nights, events and trips away are fixed the same way, with the timings talked through a little further ahead.

Most WC2R arrivals happen inside the hour of confirmation, and rather faster from the Piazza five minutes uphill. The forecourt is the one place on the circuit where it is worth agreeing whether she meets you in the lobby or at the bar, because the taxi drop is busy at curtain time.

18:00, the American Bar upstairs, where the pianist starts early and the cocktail list has a story attached to every page. 19:15, five minutes east to Rules on Maiden Lane, the oldest dining room in London, red walls and game on the menu from August. 21:00, the Lyceum or whatever is running on the Aldwych curve. 23:15, the river terrace at Somerset House if the weather has behaved, or the Beaufort Bar if it has not. 23:45, back across the forecourt.

Written as four hours with dinner, that is £900. Without the performance, three hours at £700 covers the bar and the table. Two hours at £500 is the late supper version, ninety minutes at £400 the drink and an hour upstairs, and £1,800 takes it through to a breakfast looking at the river.

Angelika treats this postcode as her working ground: she keeps the late piano sets below Aldwych, takes the table nearest the keys and goes quiet the moment the set begins, which makes her the obvious name for a slow evening on the river side. Karolina is five minutes away on Bow Street and the right company when the evening has a curtain in it. Nancy lives four streets from the market and is the easiest possible company at the end of a long working week.

Anyone else in the company reaches WC2R on the same figures, and every home district on the list sits inside the travelling the fee already covers.

North up Wellington Street is Covent Garden and the Piazza. North east past Bush House, Kingsway climbs to Holborn and the Inns. West along the Strand, the road ends at Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square, with Leicester Square up the hill behind it. Across Waterloo Bridge, ten minutes on foot, Waterloo and the South Bank begin. The postcode family is set out on the WC2 page.