Bianka, companion in Kensington

About Bianka

The first thing Kensington hosts notice about Bianka is that she greets the room before she greets you, and then gives you the rest of the evening. She is 165 cm and curvy; her hair is long and light brown, sun-kissed through the ends, and her hazel eyes change with the lamp above the table. Her clothes are soft and expensive rather than loud: knitted silk, a long coat she keeps on until the wine arrives, heels she can manage on cobbles. She looks like the person who booked the table, which is usually the impression you want.

She is in her early twenties and far calmer than that suggests. Conversation in English comes easily to her, and she has the useful habit of remembering what you said an hour ago and returning to it. She is curious about houses, about how people ended up in the work they do, about whether the wine is worth what the list says. She laughs quickly and quietly. There is no performance to her company, only attention, which is rarer and better.

In Kensington she likes one long table and no second venue. Clarke's on Kensington Church Street suits her exactly: an early sitting, a short menu, a room that hums rather than shouts, close enough to the W8 hotels that nobody needs a car. Afterwards she will walk you down the church street past the closed shop windows, naming the ones she would rob first. Her home is in Knightsbridge, a fifteen minute run along the park road, so Kensington evenings start on time.

Kensington gets a page of its own here, hotels and short walks included. Put your dates in a message to booking; her diary is kept by Cordelia, who will tell you plainly what is open.

Booking her

Bianka is out of London for part of this month, so the desk works from a waiting list for her: send your dates and we will write back the day she confirms her return. Three hours or more is the shape that suits her.

Her figures are the same figures every companion here works to, printed on the rates page, and the order a booking runs in is on the booking page.

An evening with Bianka

Her evenings have one venue and a lot of time in it. She arrives at your hotel a few minutes before the hour, and by the time you reach the restaurant she has already decided you are having the fish. She reads a wine list like a novel, and she will ask the waiter one question that makes him take the table seriously for the rest of the night.

What she gives you between courses is the useful part. She is genuinely interested in how you spend your days and completely uninterested in impressing you. By the time the plates go, two hours have passed and the room has half emptied. She walks slowly back towards the hotels on the park side, still talking, in no hurry at all to end anything.