Tiffany, companion in Soho

Frith Street after eleven is Tiffany's favourite hour in London. She is 169 cm and reads petite in the fine boned way rather than the small way, chocolate brown hair worn long, brown eyes. At 24 she is stylish without making a project of it, and she has the useful habit of looking equally right in a jazz basement and a hotel bar.

Her English is fluent and she talks in a low, amused register that suits late rooms. She plays a little piano, knows the difference between the first and the second set, and is perfectly happy to sit through an hour of music without needing to comment on any of it. She is warm company rather than dazzling company, which most guests come to prefer by the third hour. She is good at the parts of an evening that have no conversation in them, which is a rarer skill than it sounds and the reason late bookings suit her so well.

Ronnie Scott's on Frith Street is the obvious suggestion and she makes no apology for it: second set, a table near the back, dinner earlier somewhere on Old Compton Street. Afterwards the Soho hotels are three minutes away and the walk east into WC2 is closer to ten. Living four streets from the club means a late request is realistic here in a way it simply is not elsewhere in the zone. The walk from Frith Street to almost any Soho hotel takes under five minutes and she does it in flat shoes.

She is written up on the Soho page. Durations carry figures under rates. Late hours are normal here: give booking a time after ten and expect a fast reply.

Tiffany takes late starts, from ten onwards, and is usually within walking distance already. Send Romilly the hour and the hotel and expect a quick answer.

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

The Tiffany evening is a late one and it has music in it. Dinner first, early and unhurried, on one of the streets where the kitchens still take a booking at nine. Then the second set somewhere downstairs, a table at the back, and an hour in which neither of you says very much because the room is doing the talking.

Afterwards Soho is at its best, emptying out, wet pavements, somebody packing a van. She likes the short walk back more than she likes a car, and the last part of the booking is quiet and easy: lamps on, shoes off, the sort of conversation that only happens after midnight. She keeps to the agreed hour and leaves without any drama at all.