Thirties and beyond: four names worth a long evening
Four women on this register have turned thirty, and they are the ones guests ask for when they have outgrown being impressed and would simply like an interesting adult across the table. It is a short list on purpose. The desk would rather print four honest names than pad the number with women who are not on it.
All four are booked on exactly the same ladder as everybody else, and not one of them costs any more or less for the hours. What they offer instead is a different quality of evening, which is harder to photograph and much easier to notice.
Margo, in Kensington
Margo is 166 cm and slim, long dark brown hair worn dead straight, early thirties. She will disagree with you politely and at length, which is why dinner with her never goes flat, and she asks for three hours as a minimum because two turns a proper dinner into an appointment. She is travelling at the moment and the desk is collecting dates for her return.
Sonya, in the square mile
Sonya is 162 cm and athletic, dark brown worn straight, hazel eyed, early thirties. She has a genuine talent for the old City dining rooms and the cathedral steps after seven, when the district has emptied and the streets belong to almost nobody. She is away briefly and dates are being taken for her.
Nancy, in the docklands
Nancy is 170 cm and curvy, long golden blonde hair, blue eyed, and she has turned thirty. She is the calmest person in E14 on a Thursday, prefers a counter seat to a formal table, and will not raise your work unless you raise it first. She is abroad briefly with the desk holding dates.
Violetta, in the City
Violetta is 178 cm, tall and slender, sleek black hair, and she has turned thirty as well. Her evenings are built around a concert with an early table beforehand and the concrete highwalks afterwards, and she books four hours because anything less cuts the interval in half.
What a short list means for notice
With four names, the date decides everything. A fortnight of warning gets you a choice, a week usually gets you one of them, and the same evening is a matter of luck. The desk will not pretend otherwise to keep a message going, and it would rather tell you no on a Tuesday than nothing at all by Friday.
Dates sent for a companion who is away are held in the order they arrive and answered on the day her diary reopens, one message per guest and no chasing required. Everything about how that runs is on the booking page.
Booking from a short list
Three of these four are away or travelling at the moment, which is unusual and will not last. The desk takes dates rather than confirmations while that is true, and writes to you in the order the dates arrived on the day each diary reopens. Nothing is held on a maybe.
Kensington and the City of London are where most of these evenings happen, and both have their own pages. If you cannot wait, say so and Cordelia will name the nearest thing on the register, most often from late twenties.
Other lists
One line is enough
Write the district, the hour and the number of hours. What comes back has a name in it, a time in it and a figure in it, and nothing moves after that.