Couples, and the company of a third adult
A couples booking is two people booking company together rather than one. It is the same ladder, the same hours and the same terms as any other evening on this site, and what is booked is her time and her company for the length you agree. Nothing further is offered here, implied here or arranged here, and the desk is straightforward about that with everybody who writes in.
In practice these are dinners, long evenings in a flat, and nights that start at a bar and end back at a table. They are also, more often than people expect, the easiest bookings Nell takes: two hosts instead of one, a conversation with three sides to it, and nobody having to carry the evening alone. The women who take them are listed on the board like everybody else.
Suited to couples
What is actually being arranged
Hours of company for two people instead of one, at one figure from the rates ladder rather than two. Three hours is £700 whether there is one of you at the table or two. She arrives, she is introduced, and the evening proceeds like any other good evening with three adults in it. What two or three adults choose to do with their own time is their business and is never part of what is booked.
Both of you should write
Not a rule, just the thing that makes these work. When the first message comes from both of you, or mentions the other person by name and says what they want from the night, the desk can put you with somebody who suits both rather than one. Evenings that go wrong are almost always the ones where one half of a couple has been volunteered rather than asked, and Nell would honestly rather find that out in writing than at a door.
It need not be a long message. Two names, a sentence each about the sort of company you enjoy, and the evening you have in mind is plenty to work from, and it takes the desk about ten minutes to come back with a suggestion and the reason for it.
Where it works out here
A long table is the easiest start, and the east is full of rooms where a three is unremarkable: the bare tables in Bethnal Green, the short menus around Spitalfields, the loud strip on Kingsland Road where nobody looks up. After that, a flat with somewhere for three people to sit is a great deal better than a hotel room with one chair in it. Say which you have when you write.
The honest limits
She is company for an evening and that is the whole of the arrangement. She will not referee anything, she is not there to settle an argument the two of you have been having for a year, and she will say so kindly and early if that is what the evening turns out to be. Every woman here can end a booking she is uncomfortable in, keeping the hours already run, which is the ordinary rule on this site and applies exactly the same way here.
Who takes them
Michelle is calm enough to lower the temperature of any room she walks into. Nancy has the patience for a long three sided conversation and the sense to let it wander. Thea is warm, funny and entirely unflustered. Sonya is composed and never fills a silence for the sake of it. Patricia is level, direct and good at making two people feel like the hosts rather than the audience.
Notice, and how the evening ends
A day is plenty and the same evening is often possible, though the names above are the busiest on the roster at weekends. Ending is the same as anywhere else here: the hours you booked are the hours you pay for, extending means agreeing the next length while there is still an evening left, and the fee goes to her in person when she arrives so that nothing about money is hanging over the table.
Two notes worth reading first
Couples, in detail
01Is it one figure or two?
One. Three hours is £700 for the booking, not per person, and the ladder on the rates page is the only one there is. Her travel is inside it wherever in the east you are.
02We have never done this. What should the first message say?
Both names, what sort of evening you have in mind, and where. Two lines is enough. Nell will come back with a name or two and say why, rather than sending you the whole roster.
03Can we meet her for a drink first and decide after?
Yes, and it is a sensible way to start. Book an hour at £250 at a bar you like. If it goes well, the length can be extended that evening; if it does not, everybody has had a pleasant drink.
04Will she be uncomfortable with two of us?
Not the women listed here, who take these bookings by choice rather than by rota. Anybody on the roster who would rather not is simply never offered for them, which is the honest way to run it.
Other nights on the book
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.