Liana, companion in Bow

About Liana

Bow Road is not pretty and Liana has never claimed otherwise. It is a wide road, a lot of traffic and two stations within four minutes of each other, and behind it the terraces go quiet in a way that central London simply cannot. Slim, 167 cm, chestnut brown hair worn long and straight, eyes brown. She stands like somebody waiting for a train she knows is coming. Plain clothes, well chosen, nothing new looking.

Late twenties, with the patience that tends to arrive around then. Fluent English, spoken at half the pace of the district. Liana swims in the Lea, or says she used to, and walks the canal from Bow Locks up to Victoria Park most weeks. She is interested in how places are made rather than how they photograph, and she has a long, funny grudge against the Olympic Park for what it did to the view.

The Morgan Arms on Morgan Street is where she takes people: a proper corner pub with a dining room bolted on, five minutes from the station and full of locals on a Tuesday. After that it is the towpath, or a car up to the Stratford hotels if that is where you are. She keeps a flat in Marylebone and is blunt about the journey, thirty five minutes on the District line and worth it for a longer evening.

Bow is three minutes from Bow Road and four from Bow Church on the DLR, with Stratford and the Wharf both a short hop out. Read rates first if you want to. Write to booking with a time and a postcode and Nell will tell you honestly how long the journey takes.

Booking her

Nell takes the address, the hour and the length, and confirms in writing with the time Liana will be at the door. E3 is a long way out, so two hours is the sensible minimum here.

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

An evening with Liana

Bow is a slow evening by nature and she leans into it. A drink first in a pub where the regulars glance up once and then leave you alone, then a dining room that takes food seriously without making a performance of it. Liana talks about the borough the way other people talk about family, fondly and with a list of complaints.

Dry weather means the locks afterwards, where the canal bends towards the Lea and the tower blocks across the water are the only lights for a good while. It is properly dark and properly quiet. The DLR from Bow Church runs until around half past midnight, and she will tell you that early in the night so nobody has to check a phone later.