Several nights, one name, one thread

What an extended booking is

Two or more evenings with the same woman, agreed together and held together. Three dinners in a week. Four nights across a fortnight. Every evening from Monday to Thursday while you are in town. It is an arrangement rather than a package: the nights are separate bookings written into one thread, and any one of them can be moved or dropped without unpicking the rest.

The lengths do not have to match either. An hour on the Monday because you are tired, four on the Wednesday because there is a table worth sitting at, an overnight on the Friday because nothing happens on the Saturday. Each one is priced for what it is, and the whole of it is written down before the first evening starts.

Why one name rather than several

Variety is the obvious argument and the weaker one. Booking three different women in a week means three first evenings, three openings, three explanations of the same job. The people who do this regularly land on one name within a month and then stop shopping, because the second evening with somebody is better than the first evening with anybody.

How it gets counted

Each night on its own rung. Three hours is £700 on the Tuesday and £700 again on the Thursday, and an overnight in the middle of a week is £1,800 exactly as it would be on its own. Nothing is bundled, nothing is rounded up, and the whole of it is set out in writing before the first evening. A weekend taken as a single block is quoted on its own, since it is not a rung on the published ladder.

Where these come from

Mostly the serviced apartments and studio hotels: the kitchens rather than the minibars. Aldgate has the biggest cluster of them and takes more of these bookings than anywhere else on this site. Long lets around Bow and the Fish Island studios are the other half, where people are in for months and treat the district as home rather than as a visit.

What changes by the third evening

Everything gets shorter. The first fifteen minutes of a first evening are spent establishing who you both are. By the third night that has already happened, which means an hour is worth appreciably more than it was the first time. She remembers what you ordered, what you complained about and which street you liked, because she has been paying attention rather than performing attention.

Who suits it

Liana is unhurried and takes the long view of an evening. Samanta is better an hour in than most people manage all night. Lucy takes weeknight bookings on the City edge and is short on small talk in the best way. Michelle is worth booking repeatedly because she is slow to warm and considerably better for it. Karolina remembers what you said last time, which is the whole point of this. Anybody else on the board can be asked on the same terms.

Notice, and changing your mind

Give the desk the dates as early as you have them, because clearing four evenings is a different job from finding one. A night can be moved or dropped with a day of warning and nothing is owed, and the rest of the arrangement stands. If it is going well and you want to add nights, say so before the last one rather than after it, since the evenings either side of a holiday weekend go first.