Hotel hours, from a single one to a whole evening
One commissionThe shortest thing arranged here is an hour in your room, at £250, and it is the commission asked for at the least notice. She comes to you. There are no premises to visit, no flat kept for the purpose and nobody else involved at the door: what is arranged is one woman arriving at the address you gave, at the minute agreed, for the length of time agreed.
Rooms along Park Lane and the addresses behind Mount Street account for a good deal of this work, though any hotel or private residence inside the twelve districts is ordinary. Longer is cheaper by the hour: £400 buys ninety minutes and £500 buys two, which is why very few guests stop at one. Anyone on The Hang takes this booking, and the whole ladder sits on the rates page.
Suited to hotel hours
What the hour holds
A drink, a conversation and the company of somebody who is entirely present for the length of it. She arrives dressed for wherever you are, which in practice means dark and simple unless you have said otherwise. She does not look at a telephone, she does not glance at the time, and she leaves at the hour that was written down rather than at the hour the room has run out of things to say.
The fee buys her hours and her company. That is the whole of the offer, it is the same sentence on every one of these ten pages, and it is not a softening of anything. Guests who want a different arrangement are in the wrong place, and are told so kindly in the first reply.
The lift, and not the front desk
She goes up. She does not ask for you at reception, she does not stand about in a lobby with her coat on, and she does not mention a name to anyone. Give Tamsin the hotel and the hour when you write, and the room number only once a woman is confirmed to you; it goes to her and is never written anywhere else.
London hotels are unbothered by a guest having a visitor, which is worth saying plainly because first time guests often assume otherwise. If your floor needs a key in the lift, say so in the message and she will be told where to wait, which will be somewhere that looks like waiting for nobody in particular.
Private addresses
Flats and houses are as ordinary as hotels here. What she needs is the street, the number, the floor if there is one and the name the buzzer answers to, because a woman standing on a doorstep pressing the wrong bell is the one part of this that is genuinely awkward. Parking, porters and a shared entrance are all easier when they are mentioned in advance rather than discovered at ten at night.
Five who suit a short booking
Jasmin is 160 cm, twenty-two and keeps late hours, which makes her the name most often free when a message arrives after ten. Roxi would rather meet in a lounge than a lobby and is used to the hotels around Grosvenor Square. Tina is 158 cm, walks to most W1 addresses and is frequently the quickest arrival in the book. Molly is warm within ten minutes of coming through a door, which matters more in a short booking than in a long one. Stacy is often free in Chelsea at short notice, though she is honest that she is better over four hours than one.
How an hour actually runs
She is at the door at the minute Tamsin gave you, allowing for the lift. The first ten minutes are coats, a glass and settling which chair is the comfortable one. The middle of the hour is the conversation, and the last ten minutes are hers to manage: she mentions, lightly, that the time is nearly gone, so that nobody has to look at a watch. If you would like it to run on, say so before that point rather than at the door. The booking simply becomes the longer line on the ladder, ninety minutes or two hours, provided nobody is waiting for her afterwards, and she will tell you at once whether anybody is.
Writing the message
Four things: the date, the hour, one length from the ladder and the hotel. Add a name if you have one, or describe the evening and leave the choice to Tamsin, who will suggest two and say why. Back comes the woman's name, her arrival time to the minute and the figure in pounds, and nothing is held until you agree to all three. The booking page sets the sequence out in four steps.
The figure goes into her hand as she arrives, in the exact sum that was confirmed, and neither of you raises it again. Give three hours' notice and an evening can be moved or dropped with nothing owed.
Two pages of the long view on this commission
Questions on this commission
Often inside the hour, because several of the women live close to it and Mount Street is four minutes from one end to the other. Tamsin puts an arrival minute in her reply that she expects to be kept, and if the evening has already gone she says that instead of guessing.
Write as soon as you know. With three hours or more in hand it moves or drops and nothing is owed. Inside the last two hours before she is due, half the agreed figure stands, since by then she has turned down other evenings for yours. If you are simply held up on the way back, she waits fifteen minutes past the agreed time.
For a drink and a conversation at the end of a long day, yes. For anything with a meal in it, no: take two hours at £500, or the four hour table at £900, and the evening stops being about the time.