Lucy, companion in Aldgate

About Lucy

Aldgate is a junction pretending to be a district: three roads, a lot of glass and the Square Mile stopping dead at the pavement. Lucy finds that honest and likes working here. Dark brown hair, long and curling of its own accord, and a slender frame at 163 cm. Brown eyes, and a face that gives away almost nothing until she smiles. She dresses simply and well, dark colours, one good coat, heels she can cross Aldgate High Street in.

Mid twenties, fluent English, and short on small talk in the best way. Lucy would rather ask you one real question than six polite ones. She has a good memory for faces and a better one for what people ordered last time. She walks the Square Mile at weekends, offices shut and pavements empty, and calls it the only time the place makes any sense.

Her regular first stop is The Hoop and Grapes, the leaning old building on Aldgate High Street that outlasted everything this road threw at it, and a strange, welcome thing to find between the towers. Dinner is usually a short walk east or south towards the river. She lives in Pimlico and treats Aldgate as an easy run, twenty five minutes on the Circle line, less by road after nine.

Aldgate puts you one minute from the Circle and Metropolitan platforms and six from Tower Hill, so the hotels around here are all within walking distance of each other. Prices are listed on rates. Tell booking which hotel and which hour, and Nell covers the rest.

Booking her

Send the desk the hotel name and a time and Nell will come back with the arrival time in writing. Lucy takes late bookings in the City on weeknights, when the area empties out and everything moves quickly.

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

An evening with Lucy

Weeknights here have a particular shape. At seven the pavements are full of people going home, and by nine the whole area belongs to whoever stayed. Lucy times an evening to that: a first drink in the leaning pub while it is still busy, then dinner when the tables have loosened up and the waiters have stopped counting.

She is an excellent dinner companion because she does not perform. The conversation goes where it goes, and she is comfortable letting it stop for a moment. Afterwards, if you have the energy, she will walk you down towards the Tower, where the river opens up and the noise falls away completely. Ten minutes and you are back at the door. She never lets an evening end on a station platform if she can help it.