Slim and slender: ten names, sorted from the quietest room to the loudest
TEN 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 and the half that tells you least.
The useful difference is noise. Soho runs on a gradient from a patisserie with eight tables to a basement where two hundred people are shouting at a comedian, and each of these ten sits at a fixed point along it. So the card runs quiet to loud. The decibels do not move the figure: £250 an hour, £700 for three, £900 for a four hour dinner date.
Slim and slender, tonight
Everyone listed under slim and slender, taken from her file rather than a guess. Open a card for rates and a message with her name.
Cindy
Karolina
Liana
Lucy
Margo
Patricia
Samanta
Stacy
Vanessa
Violetta
Barely above a murmur
Liana, 167 cm and chestnut haired, takes tea at the eight table patisserie on Greek Street in the late afternoon and walks you back through the square as the light goes. She speaks softly, reads short French novels and wants a day of notice so a weeknight can be properly unhurried. Two hours at £500 is her natural shape, and she is the quietest booking this house arranges.
A bookshop, then a screen
Patricia, 172 cm, begins among the shelves on Charing Cross Road, chooses a novel on your behalf and makes you read its first page standing up. A late film follows, or a lounge and a glass of red. Lucy, 163 cm, keeps a similar register: a ristretto at the pavement counter on Frith Street, then a patient look at whatever the sky over W1 is prepared to show.
Daylight and a gallery wall
Cindy, 168 cm and blue eyed, goes round a photography show twice and then loses the rest of the afternoon at the book table, which she admits to freely. Her hours run lunchtime to early evening, so ninety minutes at £400 usually covers it, with the lanes around Carnaby taking care of the walk afterwards.
A townhouse bar and a corner banquette
Margo, 166 cm, takes the chair facing the door in the champagne bar folded into the old rooms on Romilly Street, orders something dry and deflects every question about herself into a sharper one about you. Vanessa, 173 cm, prefers a long dinner in a Fitzrovia dining room, where a conversation can wander between languages without anybody hurrying it along.
Candlelight and a full house
Samanta, 174 cm, chooses the candlelit baroque concerts near Trafalgar Square, where one violin carries cleanly to the back row. Karolina, the same height, takes the largest stage in the West End: champagne beforehand, supper afterwards, arranged several days out because those timings deserve the care.
Two hundred people and a microphone
Violetta, 178 cm, ends in the comedy cellar off Piccadilly Circus, seated far enough back to stay safe, laughing first. Stacy, 176 cm, takes the late bill in the Dean Street basement and sits close enough to risk becoming part of it. Both are happiest at full volume, and Stacy is content to hear from you at nine about a show at ten.
Several nights, one arrangement
Staying a week? Booking the same name across several evenings settles the diary once and removes the question of notice altogether, which suits the quieter half of this card particularly well. Several nights in one arrangement explains how repeat evenings are written and held. The published board applies throughout, with weekends quoted separately.
The same ten, on other cards
Most of this card reappears on statuesque, since a long line and height tend to travel together, and one name also sits among the neat frames on petite, which is a useful reminder that slender is not a synonym for small. By colour the ten are spread across the brunettes card and three others. Choose the volume you are in the mood for, then send the door a name and an address.
Slim and slender on the list
Choose a name above or ask the host who is free tonight.