Styles: twelve cards cut from one guest list
The door keeps one list, and this page cuts it twelve ways. What colour she wears her hair tonight, what frame she carries, how long she has been doing all this: three plain facts, sorted rather than scored. Nobody is printed on a card who is missing from the full guest list, and no card places one woman above another.
Opening a card changes the name that arrives and nothing underneath it. An hour is £250 wherever you start, two hours £500, a night £1,800, and the ladder in full, with deposits and the cancellation terms, is printed on the rates page.
Twelve cards on the table
Grouped the way guests describe her at the door: hair, silhouette and age band, each drawn from her verified file.
> --hair
Blondes
4 names · Cindy · Nancy · Nora +1FOUR ON THIS CARD. Honey, caramel, bright gold and a loose wave, each worn long. It is the shortest card the house keeps, and it holds a pattern nobody arranged: these are the four who make the...
Brunettes
15 names · Bianka · Jasmin · Laura +12THE LONGEST CARD IN THE HOUSE. Fifteen women, in shades running from sandy balayage through chestnut and chocolate down to a brown that reads black under a low lamp. A card this long is useless as...
Raven haired
6 names · Angelika · Danielle · Karolina +3BLACK, WORN LONG. Six women who share a colour and very little else. The tape runs from 168 cm to 178 cm, the tempers from dry and unhurried to quick and loud, and each of them has a particular...
Auburn and red
3 names · Lea · Luna · PatriciaTHE RAREST COLOURING THE HOUSE KEEPS. Three women in three distinct shades: true auburn worn in waves, a dark auburn that goes frankly red under bar light, and an auburn brown that only admits to...
> --silhouette
Petite
7 names · Jasmin · Lea · Lucy +4SEVEN ON THIS CARD, THE TAPE RUNNING FROM 158 CM UPWARD. Petite is filed from frame and bearing rather than from the measurement alone, which is why the tallest name here sits a little above the...
Statuesque
9 names · Angelika · Karolina · Michelle +6172 CM AND UPWARD, MEASURED ACROSS A TABLE RATHER THAN CLAIMED. Nine women, with six centimetres between the shortest pair and the tallest. Height is what files them here; bearing is what the room...
Curvaceous
10 names · Bianka · Danielle · Luna +7TEN ON THIS CARD. Filed from build and worn with some confidence: tailoring that follows the figure, good coats, colour where the room can take it. The tape runs from 160 cm to 175 cm, and between...
Slim and slender
10 names · Cindy · Karolina · Liana +7TEN ON THIS CARD, SPANNING FIFTEEN CENTIMETRES. Clean tailoring, a long line and an entrance made without raising the volume are common to most of them, which is the easy half of the description...
Toned and athletic
5 names · Angelika · Laura · Nora +2FIVE, AND ALL OF THEM WALKERS. Soho is half a mile across and a car is usually the slowest way through it, particularly on a Friday. These five worked that out long ago. Between them they row,...
> --ageEarly twenties
10 names · Angelika · Bianka · Jasmin +7TAKEN FROM DOCUMENTS EXAMINED ACROSS A TABLE. Ten women aged 22 to 24 sit in this band. It tells you almost nothing about how anybody looks and a fair amount about tempo: these are the names most...
Late twenties
14 names · Cindy · Danielle · Karolina +11FOURTEEN NAMES, AGED 25 TO 29. The largest band the house keeps, and the one where the answer to where shall we go comes back fastest. By this stage a woman generally knows which evenings suit her...
Thirties and beyond
4 names · Margo · Nancy · Sonya +1FOUR NAMES, AGED 30 TO 32. The smallest band in the house, resting like the other two on documents checked face to face, and reading best as a description of manner. Composed, certain, quite...
Hair, four cards
Colour shortens a first message faster than anything else, so the house begins there. Blondes is the smallest card at four names, and every one of them is better while there is still light in the lanes. Brunettes runs to fifteen and reaches every street in the parish. Raven haired holds six, all of them at ease once the kitchens have closed. Auburn and red holds three, and the house has nobody else in that range.
Silhouette, five cards
These describe frame and bearing, nothing more, and most women appear on two of them. The tape runs from 158 cm on petite to 178 cm on statuesque, with curvaceous, slim and slender and toned and athletic filling the ground between. The overlap is deliberate, and reading two cards together is the quickest way to a shortlist worth sending.
Stage of life, three cards
Ages are taken from identity documents examined across a table, and the three bands are really descriptions of pace. Early twenties keeps the back half of the clock and an opinion on every room that has just changed hands. Late twenties is the largest band, settled in its tastes, quick to name a table. Thirties and beyond holds four names the door knows without checking.
Then one message
Her own page carries the portraits, the hours she keeps, the district her journey starts from and a message with her name already written in. Cannot choose between two? Send both, with where you are staying and a start time, and the host answers with whichever of them the diary can give you. A plain hour in your room is the simplest way through the door, and booking sets out the three entries made before she leaves. Fees cover time and companionship only, and every woman on every card is 18 or over.
Describe her, the host finds her
A look, a height, an age band: say it in a line and the list narrows itself.