Milena, companion in Hoxton

About Milena

Milena walks the length of Kingsland Road most weeks and could give you a running order of every good room on it. Curvy, 175 cm, black hair straight to the waist, eyes dark brown. She is used to being looked at on a street where everybody is trying to be. She dresses against it: flat boots, a long coat, nothing loud, her height doing all the work on its own.

Mid twenties, with fluent English and a sense of humour that runs about two degrees drier than people expect from someone who smiles that readily. Milena is easy in her own skin and impatient with anyone who is not. She has opinions about food that she will defend at length, a proper laugh, and a habit of ordering one extra thing for the table because she cannot bear the thought of anybody leaving hungry.

Dinner is Song Que on Kingsland Road, nine times in ten: strip lights, fast service, a menu the length of an arm and the best pho on the strip. She orders. Afterwards the bars around Hoxton Square are a four minute walk and the square itself is a decent place to stand for a moment. She lives in South Kensington and is honest about the run east, an hour on a Friday and half that on a Tuesday.

Hoxton sits between the N1 flats and the E2 end of the Hackney Road, two minutes from the Overground. Check rates for the figures. Put an hour and an address to booking and she will be there on that hour.

Booking her

One message to the desk with the address and the hour, and Nell confirms in writing before she travels. Milena would rather be booked for three hours than rushed through two, given how far she comes.

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

An evening with Milena

She does not believe in the slow build. Milena arrives, sits down, tells you something faintly ridiculous about her afternoon and the evening is already running. Dinner comes early because she likes to eat before the second drink, and she will take charge of the ordering unless you look genuinely upset about it.

After that the night loosens. The bars off Hoxton Square, a basement if it is cold, the green if it is not. She is good in a crowd and better out of one, and somewhere around eleven she will suggest going back, not because the night is over but because the interesting part of it is somewhere quieter. The walk down to Old Street takes ten minutes and she will not let you take a car for it.