The desk, and how it is run
This is a small operation and it reads like one on purpose. One front desk, one person on it, twenty eight companions and twelve districts we actually know.
Nell, and why one person
Nell takes every message that arrives here. Not a team, not a rota, not a shared inbox with three people guessing at each other's bookings. That is slower than an automated reply and considerably better, because the answer you get has somebody's judgement behind it.
It also means the answers are honest about time. If a companion cannot be at a door in Bow in half an hour, Nell says fifty minutes rather than saying thirty and hoping. Nobody has ever been pleased by an optimistic arrival time.
Why the east
Because it is a real place with real distances in it, and because the agencies that cover the whole of London tend to know none of it properly. Twelve districts is a number a desk can hold in its head: which hotels have a lobby you can sit in, which streets have a street door and a long stair, how long the road east takes at seven and how long it takes at eleven.
The whole of this site is built on that. The district pages carry real stations and real walking minutes rather than a paragraph of scenery. If a page says nine minutes, somebody walked it.
The companions
Twenty eight women, all adults, all here because they chose to be and free to stop at any point without explaining themselves. Each has a district she knows and works, and each takes the same figure as the others, which removes the one conversation nobody enjoys having.
What is written about them on the board is written to be accurate rather than flattering. Heights are measured, ages are given as bands, and if somebody is away her page says so with the date she comes back.
What we do not do
We do not publish a list of services, because the fee is for her time and her companionship and nothing else is on offer. We do not price extras, because there are none. We do not have arrangements with hotels, and we say which hotels people stay in only because a guest needs an address to write down.
We do not price one companion above another, and we do not add anything for a late hour or a Saturday. We do not keep what we do not need, and we do not sell anything to anyone.
What we expect from you
An accurate address, a name the room is held under, and the same courtesy any guest would expect in return. A companion can end a booking and leave if she is treated badly, keeps the fee, and this desk will back her without a discussion. That is the only rule here that is not negotiable.
Everything else is easy. Write in Shoreditch or from anywhere else on the east postcodes list, say what the evening is, and Nell will do the rest.
Hours
The desk is staffed around the clock, which in practice means a message at four in the morning is answered at four in the morning. Bookings run at the same figures at every hour of the day and on every day of the week. The whole ladder is on the rates page.
Questions, answered plainly
01Are you an agency or a directory?
An agency, and a small one. Every companion listed here is somebody the desk works with directly and can speak for, which a directory cannot do.
02Can I speak to somebody rather than write?
The desk works in writing, on WhatsApp and Telegram. It keeps the details straight and leaves you with the arrival time and the figure in text rather than in memory.
The trains stop. We do not.
One message with the date, the time and the postcode, and the rest of the night is arranged quietly, anywhere from Hoxton down to the basin at Limehouse.