Thirties and beyond: four names, and what each does with a pause
The shortest note the board keeps: four women between 30 and 32, each entirely settled in how she wants an evening to go. It is the note the desk puts up when somebody writes that they would rather not choose.
The common thread is what happens in a silence. Most rooms hurry to fill one. These four use one instead, and that difference is the whole reason people book this band a second time.
Cast as Thirties and beyond
Plain facts, checked in person, never a guess. Every badge opens her pass, where the same details sit beside her rail and her photo call.
Margo, and the value of a pause
Margo is 31 and 166 cm, dark brown hair worn straight and undramatic, short red nails, and a stillness in company that makes the rest of a table slow down to match her. Contemporary art, piano practice daily, a balcony she gardens seriously. She rewards patience, and regulars tend to land on her once they know the shape of week they want. An overnight is £1,800, and it is the shape she prefers.
Nancy, and the art of being unrattled
Nancy is 30, golden blonde, blue eyed, 170 cm, and her home is inside the postcode, which is why she walks to most of her evenings. Forty lengths before breakfast, long drives at weekends, and an appetite for sushi she has stopped defending. Nothing dents her: a late change, a delayed table, a room that turns out to be the wrong one. £700 buys three hours, dinner, and a slow circuit of Covent Garden after it.
Sonya, and a curtain kept exactly
Sonya is 32 and 162 cm, with the upright carriage ballet leaves, hazel eyes, and a working window between five and ten. Meditation in the morning, class after it, and a fragrance cupboard she can talk about for an hour. She is the calmest arrival on the sheet and the most punctual, which matters when the seats are timed. Three hours, £700: a glass, the performance, the walk home.
Violetta, and the driest line in the room
Violetta is 30 and 178 cm, the tallest name the board carries, sleek black hair, brown eyes that give away nothing until she decides otherwise. Swimming at an unreasonable hour, small comedy rooms, second hand bookshops. She says very little for twenty minutes and then says the thing everybody else was thinking. An evening of three hours sits at £700 and usually outlasts its own plan.
What four names means when the week is busy
A short note fills quickly, and two of these four work in stretches with a landing date printed on their own pages. So send two dates rather than one, and ask early in the week for anything at the weekend. Where none of the four is free the desk says exactly that, rather than steering you quietly towards somebody else under the same heading.
Where the four also sit
Two of them are on slim and slender, one on curvaceous, one on toned and athletic and one on petite, while the colours take one each from blondes, brunettes and raven haired. The band below, late twenties, holds fourteen names if none of these four has room.
Writing to the desk for one of the four
Name her, give the date, the hour and the address, and the answer comes back with a figure and an arrival time. An ordinary evening and a night through to morning are confirmed the same way, in a single thread. This band takes more than its share of client dinners and press nights, where a date is usually fixed a fortnight out, and booking sets out every step before she leaves home.
Cast another way
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