Thea, companion in South Kensington

About Thea

Thea belongs to South Kensington the way a regular belongs to a restaurant: quietly, and with everybody pleased to see her. She is curvy and 165 cm, her caramel blonde hair long, her green eyes the thing guests mention first when they describe her later. Her clothes are soft and considered, a wrap dress, a coat in camel wool, a scarf she will lend you if the evening turns. In her late twenties, she has a settled warmth that makes an unfamiliar city feel a good deal less unfamiliar.

She speaks English gently and asks the sort of questions that get answered honestly. She is interested in food, in languages she is slowly learning for pleasure rather than need, and in the history of the streets around her, which is more eccentric than it looks. She is affectionate company and entirely without side. Guests who have had a difficult week tend to book her twice, which is the most reliable review the desk has.

Her evening is a supper rather than a dinner. Daquise on Thurloe Street, the old Polish room two minutes from the station, is where she brings a guest who wants a room with a memory: paper cloths, a long menu, staff who have seen everything. She likes the late sitting, when the room is half full and nobody is hurrying you out. Afterwards, a slow walk back past the lit fronts of the museums, and since her own door is three streets from there, nobody ends up watching the clock.

The museums, the station and the late kitchens all sit on the South Kensington page. A message to booking with the night in it is answered the same day, meeting place included.

Booking her

Thea likes a late sitting, so the desk usually sets her evenings from half past eight and lets them run. Send Cordelia your date and the hotel and the confirmation comes back the same day with the meeting point in it.

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 Thea

Everything starts later with her, and it is better for it. Half past eight, a room with paper cloths and a menu that has not changed in decades, and a bottle that lasts the whole evening. She orders the things a guest would never pick and is right about all of them.

The conversation goes the long way round. She asks about home, and about what you were like before the job, and she has the patience to wait through a bad answer until a good one arrives. Afterwards the museum quarter is lit and empty, and the walk takes twenty minutes if you dawdle, which she will. She lives close by, so a fourth hour is usually possible if you want one.