The Cabinet, and the twelve ways one list is sorted
The cabinetThere is one list here. The cabinet is that list pulled open twelve ways: by hair, by frame and by age. Three plain facts, taken from her documents and a tape rather than from an adjective, and sorted without being scored. No drawer outranks another, nobody is placed above anybody inside one, and every name in it is also on The Hang.
Opening a drawer changes which name arrives and nothing else: an hour is £250 in all twelve, ten hours £1,800, and the full ladder sits on the rates page. Every woman appears in three drawers and thirteen of them in four, which is simply how a sorted list behaves.
Twelve drawers
Hair, four drawers
Colour shortens a first message more than anything else, so the cabinet starts there. Blondes holds four. Brunettes holds fifteen, spread across nine of the twelve districts. Black haired holds six, five of them at 170 cm or above, by accident rather than policy. Auburn and red holds three and is the smallest drawer.
Frame, five drawers
Build and height, and nothing further. The tape runs from 158 cm in petite to 178 cm in statuesque, with curvaceous, slim and slender and toned and athletic between. The overlap is deliberate: a woman who is tall and slim appears in both drawers rather than under whichever word came first.
Age, three drawers
Ages are read off a document, not guessed from a photograph, and everyone here is eighteen or over. Early twenties holds ten and suits a quicker pace. Late twenties is the largest at fourteen and holds most of the long dinners. Thirties holds four, the names Tamsin reaches for when a room is going to be difficult.
What the cabinet does not do
It does not rank, star or price anybody differently. Nor is a drawer the whole of a woman: it knows her hair and her height and nothing of how she is at the second hour of a dinner, which is on her own page and is what decides an evening.
If two drawers both look right, read them together. That is the quickest route to a shortlist, and it is what Tamsin does when a guest leaves the choice to her.
Then one message
Her page carries the photographs, the hours she keeps, her district and the length of evening that suits her. Send a name, a date, the hours and where you are staying; the reply names a woman, an arrival time and a figure in pounds. Booking has the four steps, and the commissions list the ten shapes an evening can take.