Lucy, companion in Fitzrovia

Fitzrovia is where the middle of the city relaxes slightly, and Lucy is at her best in it. She is 163 cm and slender, with dark brown hair that curls properly rather than politely, and brown eyes. At 24 she has an unfussy look, a good coat and flat shoes carried in a bag, and she is one of the few people who can make a pub and a private dining room feel like the same evening.

Her English is fluent and quick to laugh. She talks about music in detail and about herself hardly at all, keeps a running list of every Fitzrovia basement worth an hour, and is very good with guests who have had a long week and cannot face a performance. Nothing she does requires an audience, which is the point of her. She is also the least judgmental company on this list, which guests work out quickly and then appreciate for the whole of the booking.

She will point you at the Newman Arms on Rathbone Street for a first drink, upstairs if it is free, because the room is small enough that conversation starts on its own. Charlotte Street is two minutes from there, the hotels around Berners Street five, and Oxford Street about seven. Lucy comes up from Pimlico, twenty minutes on a normal evening, and she sends the desk her leaving time rather than a guess. If the weather turns she will find somewhere with a fire rather than complain about it.

Her listing is on the Fitzrovia page. What an evening costs, length by length, is under rates. Message booking with the date and the hour and expect a plain answer.

Lucy sends the desk her actual departure time, so the arrival hour Romilly gives you is the real one. Tell him the hotel, the hour and the length in one message.

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

A good night with Lucy usually has three parts and no plan. A drink somewhere with wooden floors and too few chairs, where you both end up standing and it turns out to be better that way. Dinner on Charlotte Street, booked late, ordered fast. Then whatever the hour suggests, which in her case is often a basement with a band nobody has heard of yet.

She is equally happy if none of that happens. A whole booking spent in a hotel room with the television off and a conversation that wanders is, she says, the version she would choose for herself. She does not sulk about a change of plan and she does not check her phone. When the time is up she says so and goes, without turning it into a scene.