Covent Garden, WC2E, and the two clocks that run it

Almost every house in the district raises at half past seven, with the Opera House a touch earlier on some nights. Working backwards, that puts dinner at six and a drink at half past five, which is why the early table is the single hardest reservation to get in WC2E and why the restaurants around Maiden Lane and Covent Garden Piazza fill before six.

A companion booked for the pre curtain hours arrives at the restaurant rather than the hotel, because there is no time to do both. Ninety minutes at £400 covers a supper and the walk to the door of the theatre. Say which house and which performance when you write and the desk works to the actual curtain time rather than a guess.

When the houses come down the Piazza floods for about twenty minutes and then empties completely. The streets after eleven are among the quietest in the middle of London, which surprises people who have only seen the district at lunchtime. The cobbles hold the noise of a single pair of heels for a hundred metres.

This is the better half of the evening to book. Three hours at £700 starting at ten covers a late supper and a slow walk back. The four hour dinner date, £900, takes in both clocks: table before, performance, then a nightcap once the house lights are up.

Covent Garden station is a minute off the Piazza, Piccadilly line only, and it is the shallowest useful thing about the district: a lift shaft rather than escalators, which closes to incoming passengers on busy evenings. Leicester Square is four minutes west on the Northern and Piccadilly and never closes its gates. Charing Cross is six minutes south on the Bakerloo, the Northern and the national rail lines.

The practical effect is that a companion arriving between seven and eight usually comes in through Leicester Square and walks the last four minutes, and after eleven she comes straight up at Covent Garden. Either way the journey is counted inside the fee and the arrival time in your confirmation already allows for it.

WC2R 0EZ sits on its own forecourt off the Strand, seven minutes from the Piazza, with a river side entrance most guests never use. WC2B 4BZ was built as a newspaper headquarters and keeps a double height lobby with flowers in the middle of it. WC2E 7AW occupies the old magistrates court opposite the Opera House, three floors of atrium under a glass roof.

WC2N 4HX has a lobby you walk through rather than stand in, WC2H 9HB keeps a first floor drawing room with a fire, and the house on Henrietta Street is the plain, well placed choice a few steps from the market. Buildings, not partners. Nothing connects any of them to this desk.

Give Romilly the curtain time, the length you want and where you are staying or eating. The reply names who is free, when she arrives and what it costs, inside ten to fifteen minutes at any hour. Afterwards, one check: the name the booking is held in, the building and the room number, matched once on WhatsApp or Telegram and used for nothing else.

Her fee goes to her in person in the first minute she is with you, and no tip is expected at the end of the evening. For a Saturday in WC2E, write in the afternoon rather than at seven, because the early tables and the widest choice of company both go at about the same time.

Karolina lives four minutes from the Opera House and keeps to a six thirty dinner and a seven thirty curtain better than most box offices manage. Nancy is warm from the first minute rather than the twentieth and knows the theatre suppers worth having. Tina is minutes from most WC2 hotels and is the happiest of anyone here to be asked at short notice.

From nearby, Patricia walks down from Holborn in ten minutes, Tiffany crosses from Soho for a late booking, Michelle comes in from Chelsea and hosts an evening properly, and Violetta knows the opera repertoire and will tell you what she thinks of the production. The rest of On The Books travels here on the same figures.

North up Endell Street the district becomes Holborn in eight minutes, and a further six brings you into the garden squares of Bloomsbury. West across Charing Cross Road the streets tighten into Soho. South west past the church, the whole middle of the zone is drawn together on the Central London page. The Strand, Aldwych and Leicester Square all sit within five minutes of the market building.