Hoxton escorts, N1 and E2, two minutes off the platform

A square, a market street and the canal

Hoxton Square is a rectangle of grass with plane trees round it and low buildings on all four sides, and at seven on a summer evening every step is taken. The bars sit under the pavement more often than above it. Hoxton Street, four minutes west, is a working market street with a stall or two on weekdays and a butcher who has outlasted three waves of arrivals.

Kingsland Road carries the Vietnamese kitchens, one after another, from Old Street almost to Haggerston. The Museum of the Home occupies the old almshouses halfway along, set back behind its gardens. Behind all of it runs the Regent's Canal, and the towpath from Haggerston round to Broadway Market is the best twenty minutes of walking in N1.

Where people stay around N1

Hoxton has no large hotel inside the square itself, so guests land on its edges. The busiest of them is at EC2A 3HU, six minutes south, and borrows this district for its name rather than its own address. The Hackney Road one, east across Kingsland Road, is the closest thing N1 has to a hotel of its own. The small rooms at EC2A 3ET and the Finsbury Square house at EC2A 1DX are both within ten minutes on foot.

None of those hotels knows us and none is connected to us. Guests pick them on their own account. More often the address we are given is a flat above a shop on Pitfield Street or a new block behind the station, and that is a straightforward visit: buzzer name, floor, door.

The Windrush line does the work

Hoxton station is two minutes from the square, on the Overground viaduct. Haggerston is seven minutes north, Shoreditch High Street nine minutes south, and Old Street on the Northern line is a ten minute walk south west. At weekends the line runs through the night, which is why nobody here worries much about last trains.

Her own journey is by road from the west of town, twenty five to forty minutes depending on the hour, and the desk quotes you the honest end of that rather than the flattering one. N1 and E2 are both inside Zone 1 and Zone 2, so nothing is added for the trip.

The Great Eastern Street booking, in plain terms

Two sorts of message arrive from N1. The first is a resident, home by eight, who wants company for a long evening in his own flat and books three hours or four. The second is a visitor who has taken a short let near the square for a fortnight and treats the district as his own. Both tend to ask for a start after nine, both are comfortable meeting in a bar first, and neither wants an evening that behaves like a transaction.

Nine o'clock on Hoxton Square

A Thursday, three hours at £700, starting at nine. She meets you at a table on the square rather than in a lobby, and the first hour goes on the conversation you would have had anyway. By ten you are on Kingsland Road for something late and good, and by eleven you are five minutes from the door of the flat. The booking ends at midnight and the Overground is still running for her.

An hour at £250 also works here, and works properly: a drink and a proper talk, no clock watching, no sense that anyone is being hurried. Ninety minutes at £400 is the middle ground when dinner has already happened.

Her, and the districts either side

Bianka and Milena are the two anchored on the square. Angelika and Michelle work the streets immediately south, Danielle and Nancy come down from the E8 end, and Cindy covers the Hackney side. The other companions are all on the board.

South of Old Street roundabout is Shoreditch. North along Kingsland Road, ten minutes on the Overground, sits Dalston. Hackney is two stops the same way, and Bethnal Green lies east across the canal.