Cindy, companion in Piccadilly

The stretch between Green Park and Piccadilly Circus takes nine minutes on foot and Cindy walks it rather than sit in traffic. She is 168 cm and slim, with wavy blonde hair kept long and blue eyes that read amused more often than not. At 26 she has stopped dressing to be noticed and started dressing to be right for the room, which is a considerable upgrade.

Her English is fluent and quick. She is the sort of company who can carry a table of strangers through the first course and then give you her whole attention for the rest of the night. She swims most mornings, reads biographies rather than novels, and keeps an unreasonable knowledge of London bus routes that has rescued more than one evening from a closed road. Nothing about her is high maintenance. She carries one bag, she never asks to stop anywhere, and she has an unusual talent for making a plan that has gone wrong sound like the better plan all along.

She suggests the Wolseley on Piccadilly for anything before a show, early enough that the room is still calm, and she is entirely unbothered about ordering the same thing every time. Afterwards the hotels along Piccadilly and around St James's are a five minute walk, and the Park Lane ones about eight minutes by car at that hour. Cindy lives in Chelsea, which puts her twenty minutes away on a normal evening and twenty five when Sloane Street misbehaves.

Piccadilly is her district on this desk. Every length carries its own figure on the rates page. A short booking note naming the time is all that Romilly needs.

Cindy is best booked for the earlier part of the evening, from six onwards. Tell Romilly the hotel and the start time and she will confirm the exact hour she can be there.

Every figure she works to is on the board of rates, and the rest is one message away.

An early evening suits Cindy best. Six thirty for a drink while Piccadilly is still moving, seven for a table, and out again by nine with the night still available rather than spent. She is decisive about food, generous about wine, and she talks in a way that makes an hour go missing without any obvious effort.

If there is a second half she likes it simple: a walk down St James's Street with the shops lit and empty, a nightcap in a hotel bar that has thinned out, and then whatever the booking says. She is good at endings, neither dragging them out nor cutting them short, and she will always tell you honestly how much time is left rather than letting you discover it from the clock.