Patricia, companion in Bethnal Green

About Patricia

Patricia knows Hackney Road the way locals know it, which is to say by the good doors rather than the postcode. Slim, 172 cm. Auburn brown hair, long. Dark brown eyes, and a level way of looking at people that heads off the usual nonsense before it begins. What she wears manages to look plain and expensive without being either: a well cut dress, a coat to the knee, one ring.

Late twenties, fluent English, and better at dinner than almost anyone in this book. Patricia keeps a conversation moving without taking it over, which is a real skill and a rare one. She grew up around markets and still shops like it, she is sceptical of anything described as a concept, and she has a dry, level laugh that turns up at the end of her own sentences.

The Marksman on Hackney Road is her room: a proper pub downstairs and a dining room up the stairs where the tables are big and the food is serious. She will take the upstairs booking every time. Afterwards it is ten minutes on foot to Columbia Road or two stops on the Central line into the City. She lives in Belgravia, comes east by road, and says the journey is forty minutes and entirely her own problem.

Bethnal Green is one stop from Liverpool Street with an all night Central line service at weekends, which makes late evenings simple here. The fares are on rates. Send booking a day and an hour and Nell confirms the table and the time together.

Booking her

Send the desk a time, a length and an address, and Nell will confirm in writing before Patricia travels. Dinner bookings here want a little notice, since the good upstairs tables go early in the week.

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

An evening with Patricia

The upstairs room is the whole plan. Big tables, low ceiling, a menu built around three or four things done thoroughly, and a noise level that lets a conversation get somewhere. Patricia orders early and then gives the evening her full attention, which counts for a good deal in a city where everybody is half elsewhere.

A table is where she is best, and she knows it. Expect to be asked about your work in a way that is actually interested rather than polite, and to be argued with once. Afterwards the streets behind the road are silent by eleven, old terraces and converted workshops with their blinds up, and the walk down to the station takes eight minutes. If you are at the hotel by the town hall it is closer than that, and she will time it to the minute.