Jasmin, companion in Soho

Soho is measured in streets rather than miles, and Jasmin lives inside that measurement. She is 160 cm and petite, with long chestnut brown hair, dead straight, and brown eyes that give everything away half a second before she speaks. At 22 she is the most energetic arrival on this list and the least in need of a plan.

Her English is fluent and rapid. She is funny in the way that catches you off guard, generous with her attention, and entirely uninterested in being mysterious. She sings badly and often, knows every late kitchen between Wardour Street and Charing Cross Road, and treats a quiet night in a hotel room as a legitimate ambition rather than a consolation prize. She has no interest in pretending to be older or grander than she is, which is, oddly, the most sophisticated thing about her. What she offers is enthusiasm, and she does not ration it for anybody.

Her Soho begins at Bocca di Lupo on Archer Street, at the counter rather than a table, because she likes watching the pans. After that it depends on the hour: a basement with music, a walk through the market streets while they are being hosed down, or back to your hotel, which from her corner is rarely more than eight minutes. She lives in Soho itself, so a request sent at six is realistic for seven, and she will say plainly when it is not. Nothing in her diary is ever more than fifteen minutes from her own front door.

She belongs to the Soho page as much as to the streets behind it. Lengths and figures sit on rates. One booking line with a hotel and a time and she will say whether seven works.

Jasmin is the quickest name on the list for a same evening booking inside Soho and the streets around it. Send Romilly the hotel and the hour and expect a straight yes or no.

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

Jasmin does not really plan. Her ideal night is a counter seat at eight, four small plates ordered in the wrong order, and a conversation that goes sideways in the first ten minutes and never quite recovers. She is very good at making a stranger laugh before the drinks arrive, and she does it without any apparent effort at all.

After that, Soho decides. Sometimes it is a basement with music and a two hour detour, sometimes it is chips on Berwick Street and the walk back to your hotel. She is just as content with a whole booking spent in one room, talking, with the window open and the street noise coming up from below. Whatever the night turns into, she is present for all of it.