Tiffany, companion in Shoreditch

About Tiffany

Boundary Street on a Friday carries the smell of a spice grill fifty metres before you reach the door, and Tiffany will already be inside with a table and a pot of chai she has no intention of sharing. She is 169 cm and petite with it, small framed and light on her feet, so the height only registers when she stands up. Long chocolate brown hair, brown eyes, and clothes chosen for a city that rains: a wrap dress, a belted coat, boots with a sensible sole.

Mid twenties, fluent English, and faster than most people in conversation without ever making a point of it. Tiffany is punctual to the minute and quietly proud of it. She has a good ear for accents and a bad habit of mimicking them, she keeps a list of restaurants she has not got to yet, and she is honest to the point of bluntness about anywhere overrated, which in this postcode is a service.

Dishoom on Boundary Street is the fixed point: the long room downstairs, the verandah upstairs, and a queue she will happily stand in because she has done it a hundred times and the wait is part of it. Afterwards it is two minutes to Redchurch Street or nine down to Liverpool Street. She lives in Soho, twenty minutes by road at that hour, and considers this her second neighbourhood rather than a trip out.

Shoreditch has the densest run of rooms in the east, most of them within five minutes of her table. The rates page is short and public. Say the word through booking and the evening is set.

Booking her

Nell takes the hour, the length and the address, and sends a written confirmation with the arrival time. Tiffany is early rather than punctual, so tell the desk if you would rather she waited in the bar.

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

An evening with Tiffany

She runs an evening to a schedule she never mentions. Drinks at a quarter past seven, a table at eight, and somehow no sense of being hurried through any of it. The trick is that she books well and arrives early, so no part of the evening is spent standing about deciding.

Dinner is loud, fragrant and long, and she talks through all of it. She is best when something has her interested, which is most of the time, and the enthusiasm carries, so an ordinary Tuesday ends up feeling like an occasion. Afterwards there is the short walk up Redchurch Street, shutters down, a couple of galleries still lit, and then either a last drink or a car, and she will let you choose without hinting.