Ten hours at £1,800: the first drink, the table, and the morning after

How the night is usually shaped

It opens as a dinner does, at eight or thereabouts, and the first four hours look much like the long table. What changes is that neither of you is watching for a last train. There is no point in the night at which a clock is produced.

The morning is unhurried in the same way. She wakes when you do, takes coffee, and goes once the ten hours have run out and not a moment before.

After midnight

By midnight the table is some way behind you and the evening has moved indoors. There is a last drink, and the part of the conversation that only ever happens late, when neither of you is performing and both are a little tired. She sleeps well, sets no alarm of her own unless you ask her to, and is entirely at ease with a guest who reads for an hour before putting out the light.

Where an overnight happens

A hotel suite most often, and the two districts written from most are Mayfair and Park Lane, where the rooms are large enough for two people to be comfortable in them for a whole night. Private apartments are every bit as ordinary in the book, and Knightsbridge and the squares of Belgravia supply most of the houses, where an arrival at eight and a departure after breakfast are equally unremarkable on a quiet terrace. She brings one small bag and nothing that looks like an arrival, and she leaves the room as she found it.

What to tell the switchboard

The date, the address, and what time you would like her knocking. If breakfast matters to you, say so, because some of the circle eat properly in the morning and some want only coffee and an hour of quiet first. If there is an early flight or a meeting at eight waiting for you, tell Delphine that as well and the night is built backwards from it.

The names who take a night well

Milena takes one evening a night and no more, and prefers them to run past midnight. Luna would far rather have one long night than two short evenings. Liana is at her best after the second hour and only improves from there. Molly grows quieter and rather fonder as the night goes on. Their pages sit in the Salon, and £1,800 is the figure whichever of them is free.

Two days, or a weekend

Past ten hours the arrangement stops being an overnight and becomes days rather than hours, quoted as one sum once Delphine has your dates. A weekend is not two nights at twice the number and has never been priced that way here.

If the night has to move

A night is easier to move than most guests assume. Three hours of warning or more costs nothing, and Delphine simply looks for another date. Inside two hours, half of the £1,800 stands, and a door that is never opened is owed in full. If it is your companion who cannot come, you are told at once and offered another name or another night, and nothing whatever is owed for the one that fell away.

The plain terms

She is handed the figure herself as she comes in, precisely as it was agreed in writing. What the night buys is ten hours of an adult woman's company, which is the whole of what this house arranges and the whole of what it will ever arrange. Both parties are 18 or over, without exception.