Danielle, companion in Bloomsbury

There is a particular calm to Bloomsbury after seven, and Danielle suits it exactly. She is 170 cm, curvy, with black hair worn long and straight and brown eyes that do not hurry. At 29 she has the composure of somebody who has stopped auditioning, and she arrives looking as though the evening was always going to happen.

Fluent English, a low voice, and the habit of finishing her sentences rather than letting them trail off. She reads history for pleasure, keeps a private list of the best reading rooms in the city, and can talk about almost anything without needing to win. She is warm rather than bubbly, and guests who dislike being performed at tend to book her a second time. She is also the most patient company here. She does not mind a guest who arrives distracted, and she has never once asked a question about money, which in her experience is the quickest way to spoil an otherwise good evening.

Her Bloomsbury evening usually starts early. The British Museum on Great Russell Street runs late openings on Fridays, and she likes an hour among the Assyrian reliefs before dinner, then somewhere small on Lamb's Conduit Street or simply back to the hotel. The Russell Square hotels are four minutes from her preferred corner and the Southampton Row ones about six. She comes up from South Kensington, thirty minutes door to door when the evening behaves.

Her nights are kept on the Bloomsbury page. Look through the lengths on rates first, then write to booking with a date and the confirmation comes back in writing.

Danielle prefers a day of notice and a stated finishing time, which she keeps to exactly. Give Romilly the date, the hour and the length, and the confirmation comes back in writing.

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

Danielle's evenings begin earlier than most. Six o'clock, a gallery or a bookshop, an hour that gives you something to talk about instead of the weather. Dinner at half past seven, somewhere with tablecloths and no music, and a conversation that goes properly into one subject rather than skating three.

The second half is deliberately unhurried. She is not a woman who needs to be taken anywhere: a good room, a bottle she chose and an hour with the lamps low is her preferred version, and she says so before you have to guess. She keeps her phone away for the whole booking and she does not watch the time, which is a small thing that turns out to matter a great deal.