On the books: twenty eight companions, and where each one starts

The photographs come first, then a description written by somebody who has met her, then the practical facts, then how she tends to spend an evening in this part of London. If a description says she is quiet for the first ten minutes, she is quiet for the first ten minutes. The travel line at the foot of her highlights is the one to check against your own postcode, and it is the figure the desk repeats back when it confirms.

Several of the women here live inside the postcodes they are shown in. Three are based in Mayfair, three in Soho, three around the Piazza in Covent Garden and two in Marylebone. The rest come in from Knightsbridge, Chelsea, South Kensington, Belgravia, Paddington and Pimlico, which in practice means fifteen to thirty minutes across the middle of town.

If the evening starts in a hurry, ask the desk who is closest rather than who is prettiest. If it starts in three days, that consideration disappears. The Zone One pages list who reaches each district fastest.

The figures. An hour opens at £250 for every name here, and the whole ladder up to a ten hour night at £1,800 sits on the rates page. Travelling inside Zones 1 and 2 is counted already, whether she walks four minutes across Soho or comes over from the far side of the river.

So is the method. Romilly takes the hour, the length, the building and the name, comes back inside ten to fifteen minutes, and gives you a time rather than a window. Her fee is handed to her in person when she arrives.