Vanessa, companion in Paddington

About Vanessa

Vanessa treats Paddington as a neighbourhood rather than a station, which is a distinction most visitors never get to make. She is 173 cm and slim, her sandy brown hair long, lightened through the ends in a balayage, her hazel eyes quick to warm. She dresses simply and expensively: a column dress in a pale shade, a long coat, a bag with room for flat shoes. In her mid twenties, she carries her height the way people do when they have never once thought about it.

Her English is relaxed and she is good at the ordinary parts of an evening, the taxi, the waiting for a table, the ten minutes before the food arrives. She reads a lot, swims at the local pool rather than anywhere fashionable, and is very funny about the difference between the Paddington of the guidebooks and the one she lives in. She is a generous companion in company and a restful one alone, and she has no wish whatever to make an evening complicated.

She likes the water. Her choice here is Pearl Liang, down at basin level on Sheldon Square, below the road with the narrowboats tied up outside: a big room, a long menu and a view of the water through the glass. Before dinner, if it is light, she will walk you along the towpath to the bridge and back. She lives in Paddington, five minutes from the basin, so she will take either the restaurant or your hotel as a starting point, whichever suits.

The basin, the towpath and the hotels above them are described on the Paddington page. Message booking with your night, and say whether she should come to the hotel or meet you at the table.

Booking her

Vanessa will start at the table or at your hotel door, and the desk fixes which in the confirmation, so nobody is standing in a lobby guessing. Two or three hours is the usual shape of an evening with her here.

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 Vanessa

The basin is the reason to come. Before dinner, if the light holds, she walks you west along the towpath to the bridge and back, twenty minutes, with the boats tied up and somebody always cooking on one of them. It is the least touristy half hour in W2 and she is proud of it.

Dinner is downstairs by the water, a big room and a long menu, and she orders more than two people need without any apology. She is easy company all the way through, the sort of evening where nothing needs to be arranged because it simply works. Afterwards you are five minutes from your hotel, which she says is the real reason people should stay in Paddington and never do.