Danielle, companion in Dalston

About Danielle

Kingsland Road on a Thursday is a queue for a kebab and a queue for a club, forty metres apart. Danielle walks between the two without breaking step. She is 170 cm and curvy, long black hair straight down her back, brown eyes, and a stillness that makes the pavement move around her instead. Her clothes are dark and properly cut, a long coat, a heel low enough to actually walk in, and she has never been the loudest thing in her own outfit.

In her late twenties she has stopped explaining herself, which makes for restful company. She speaks English fluently, low and unhurried, and she listens like she is filing it away for later. Music is the real subject, not opinions about music but actual records, the pressing and the room and who was playing what in 1974. She is patient with beginners and entirely merciless about bluffing.

Brilliant Corners on Kingsland Road might have been built for her: a room where the speakers matter more than the lighting and the food arrives quietly between sides. She would happily stay all evening. There is barely a hotel in Dalston, so most nights here mean a flat and a late walk to Dalston Junction, where the Windrush line runs right through at weekends.

She lives over in South Kensington and is straight about the distance: an hour across town on a bad night, so three hours suits her better than one. Dalston is her patch and the prices are public on rates. Her fares have not moved, and they are all on rates. Ask booking which evenings are open once she lands.

Booking her

Danielle is abroad until the first week of October and Nell is already placing the evenings that follow. Send a date and an area, and the desk will confirm in writing once she is back on the ground.

Every figure she works to is public on the board, and the steps sit on the booking page.

An evening with Danielle

Her evenings run backwards from most people's. The good part is not the arrival, it is hour three, when the first record has been argued over and the second one settles it. She likes a booth, a short menu and a bar where the staff are too busy to hover. Dalston obliges on all three counts.

If you are staying central she will come to you instead, and she is realistic about that: give her the extra half hour and do not book the table for eight. What she will not do is rush the end of a night to catch something. She would rather take a car and finish the conversation. Somewhere around midnight the talk usually drops to a register you could not reach at dinner, and that is the part she turns up for.