Karolina, companion in Covent Garden

Curtain up is seven thirty and Karolina has never once made a guest miss it. She is 174 cm and slim, with long black hair she keeps straight and brown eyes that suit the low light of a theatre bar. At 27 she has the posture of somebody who was told to stand up straight and simply agreed, and she wears the sort of clothes that photograph badly and look extraordinary in person.

Her English is fluent and precise. She is quieter than the room to begin with and then, once she has decided she likes you, considerably less so. She goes to the ballet properly, three or four times a season, follows the casting at the smaller houses, and can tell you which Covent Garden kitchens will actually get you out in time for a curtain. She keeps a notebook of everything she has seen, with dates in it, which she is slightly embarrassed about and which makes her extremely good company for anybody who has ever sat through a bad production.

She recommends Clos Maggiore on King Street for evenings that need to feel like an occasion, booked early, the courtyard room if it is going. From there the Opera House is four minutes and the Strand hotels around seven. Covent Garden is home for her, which means a request sent at five is realistic for half past six, and she does not need telling where the stage door is.

Look for her on the Covent Garden page. Costs by length are listed under rates. Send a curtain time to booking and the desk arranges everything backwards from it.

If there is a show involved, tell Romilly the curtain time first and everything else is arranged backwards from it. Karolina would rather arrive thirty minutes early than cut it fine.

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

Karolina builds an evening around a curtain. Six o'clock for a drink so there is no rush, dinner at half past six where the kitchen understands what seven thirty means, then the theatre, then the part she actually likes best: the hour afterwards, when you argue about what you have just watched.

If there is no show, the shape barely changes. She wants an early table, a long middle and a walk through the piazza once it has emptied out. She dresses for the room she is going into and never overdresses for it. At the end of the booking she leaves without any awkwardness whatsoever, which is a quiet skill and much rarer than it sounds. Guests who book her twice tend to ask for the same table.