Rates, from £250 an hour, with every figure printed

What the figure covers

Her time and her company for the length booked. That is the whole of what is sold here, and the terms say it in the same words. The figure also carries her travel anywhere in Zones 1 and 2, an arrival dressed for whatever setting you described, and the planning the desk does before and during the booking.

Outside it sit the things you would pay for on any evening out: a restaurant bill, tickets, a taxi you take together. There are no priced extras, no half hour bookings and no supplement for the day, the hour or the district. Every name in the register is booked on this one ladder.

How the fee reaches her

The desk confirms the companion, the hour, the length, the address and the figure in writing, and the fee is handed to the companion herself, in person, when she arrives, before the evening begins. After that the subject is closed for the rest of the booking.

The confirmation works in both directions. It tells her the evening is real, and it tells you that those hours are closed to anybody else. If the desk or the companion ever has to cancel, you hear at once, with an alternative in the same message.

Travel, the zones, and the airports

Every district the desk publishes sits inside Zones 1 and 2, from Marylebone to Canary Wharf, and her journey to any of them costs you nothing extra. The full list is on the service area page.

For an address beyond Zone 2, Cordelia checks the taxi fare there and back and adds it to the quote before you confirm, so the total you accept is final. Airport hotels at Heathrow and Gatwick take a three hour booking as the shortest possible, her journey counted within those hours and quoted as one figure in advance.

Lengths, and choosing the right one

Most first bookings are two hours, and most second bookings are longer, which tells you something. An hour suits a late drink when the evening is already half gone. Ninety minutes is the smallest length that does not feel watched. Three hours covers anything with a performance in it, and the four hour dinner date is what people choose once they learn that dinner takes longer than they think.

Cancelling, moving, and the fifteen minutes

With three hours' notice or more, cancelling costs nothing and moving costs nothing; the desk simply finds another hour. Inside two hours, half the fee applies, because the evening has already been kept clear. If nobody is there when she arrives, the full fee applies.

She allows fifteen minutes past the start time. Past that the desk would rather write a new booking than hand you a shortened one at the same price, and it says which is happening rather than letting you work it out.

The message to send

The block on this page holds everything the desk needs in one message. Copy it, fill in the brackets and send it on WhatsApp or Telegram. Leave the room number out of that first message; it is asked for once, in the confirmation, and used only to get her to the right door. What follows is set out on the booking page.