Who we are, and how the switchboard works

The switchboard

Delphine answers the messages. She takes the day, the hour, the length and the address, proposes names rather than lists, confirms in writing, and briefs the companion herself before anybody leaves. She has met all twenty eight women in the Salon, which is why she will tell you that one of two names suits your evening better rather than agreeing with whatever you suggest.

She is also the reason nothing is improvised at a door. How your companion presents herself at reception, which entrance she uses, whether you meet her in the hall: all of that is settled in the thread beforehand. A porter who sees nothing unusual remembers nothing at all.

She answers at almost any hour, and she answers briefly. A message at two in the morning gets the same four lines as one at noon: who is free, at what minute, for what figure. Nothing about the switchboard is designed to be charming; it is designed to be correct, which over time turns out to be the more agreeable of the two.

How the circle is kept

Nobody joins this house because a photograph looked promising. Every companion is met, and what is looked for is not appearance alone but the ability to sit in an unfamiliar room with unfamiliar people and remain entirely herself. That is a rarer quality than it sounds and it cannot be coached.

Every woman here is an adult of 18 or over, works because she chooses to, and keeps the right to end an evening that is not what she was told it would be. She may decline any booking without giving a reason. Those two facts are why the company on these pages is as relaxed as it is, and they are not up for discussion with anyone.

One tariff, and no small print

There is a single ladder of lengths on the tariff page and every companion keeps to it. The fee is settled with her in person when she arrives, at the figure already written down, and nothing is added afterwards for travel inside the two central fare zones, for a late hour, for a weekend or for anything else.

The fee covers her time and her company. It has never covered anything else, and no amount of money changes that. A guest who presses the point ends the evening there, which happens rarely and is dealt with calmly when it does.

A deliberately small map

Most of what this house does happens within a mile of Hyde Park Corner. Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Mayfair and the short streets around Berkeley Square, with Notting Hill as the one address that sits properly west. The pages for each of them carry real hotels, real postcodes and honest walking minutes, because a page that invents those is no use to anybody standing on a pavement.

We would rather know twelve districts well than list ninety badly. If your address is not among them, write anyway: travel across the two central zones is inside the figure, and Delphine will tell you plainly how long a car actually takes at that hour rather than guessing at it.