Violetta, companion in the City of London

About Violetta

At 178 cm, Violetta is the tallest woman on this register and the least interested in discussing it. She is tall and slender, her long black hair sleek and straight, her brown eyes giving a room one unhurried look before she decides anything. She dresses architecturally: a long column in black or deep blue, a coat that falls straight, one bracelet, nothing else. She turned thirty this year and carries it like a promotion, with more ease than she had at twenty five.

Her English is quiet and exact, and she is comfortable being the person who says least at a table. She is not cold, though guests sometimes expect her to be; she is simply unhurried, and the warmth turns up once she has settled that the evening is a good one. Her subjects are music, buildings and the places where the two meet. She has firm views about concrete, which is an unusual thing to be passionate about and very entertaining once she starts.

The Barbican is her building and her City evening is built around it. A concert in the main hall, a table in the centre beforehand, and the conservatory upstairs if the day and the hour allow it: she knows the whole warren, including which lift saves you five minutes. Afterwards she walks the highwalks, above the traffic and entirely empty at night, which is the part of EC2 nobody thinks to visit. She lives in Belgravia and comes east in twenty five minutes.

The concert halls and the hotels near them are listed on the City of London page. Give booking the date and the performance, and the seats can be looked at before anything is settled.

Booking her

For a concert evening the desk needs the performance and the start time, and Cordelia will set the meeting an hour before the doors. Violetta asks for four hours when there is music in the plan, which covers dinner, the concert and the walk afterwards.

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 Violetta

She will want an early table, because she refuses to be one of the people arriving as the doors close. Dinner is inside the building, which sounds unpromising and is not, and she uses the hour to explain what the programme is trying to do without once making you feel examined.

Then the hall, where she is completely still, and the interval, where she is not. Afterwards the highwalks: concrete, lit from below, empty, with the towers going up on every side and the traffic somewhere underneath you. She thinks it is the best ten minutes in the City and she is difficult to argue with about it. The evening ends at your hotel, at the hour the desk confirmed.