Jasmin, companion in Albemarle Street

About Jasmin

Small rooms suit Jasmin, and so do grand ones, because she fills neither by trying. At 160 cm she is petite and quick with it, the chestnut brown hair long and straight, the brown eyes giving away rather more than she intends. She dresses younger than the house average and still entirely correctly: a short dark dress, opaque tights, flat boots for the walking and heels carried in the bag. She looks assembled rather than styled, which is the harder of the two.

Curiosity is her defining quality. She asks the question everybody else was too polite to ask, apologises charmingly, and then asks it again. Her English is quick and clear and she speaks a little faster than the rest of the house. She reads popular science for pleasure, keeps a running list of things she intends to understand properly, and is genuinely delighted to be told she has one of them wrong.

Albemarle Street is her favourite address in London for one reason: the Royal Institution sits halfway down it, and an evening lecture in that theatre is her idea of a perfect beginning. She takes a seat near the front, listens without moving, and comes out arguing. Dinner follows at whatever is still quiet and open, often a short walk east into Soho, where she has lived long enough to know which doors are worth trying after ten.

More about this stretch of Albemarle Street is on its own page, and what each length covers is at rates. Write an evening to booking and it reaches her.

• 160 cm, petite, quick on her feet
• Brown eyes; long chestnut brown hair, worn straight
• Twenty two; English at speed, and very direct questions
• Soho based, five minutes east of Albemarle Street
• Lectures, late dinners, arguments she enjoys losing

Arranging her evening

Jasmin's evenings are put together around whatever is on that week, so give Delphine two or three possible dates and she will choose the best of them. Three hours covers a talk and a proper dinner after it.

Her figures are the house figures, set out in full on the rates page, and the whole arrangement runs in one written exchange from the first line to the confirmation.

An evening with Jasmin

She will have read something about the subject beforehand, which she admits immediately and slightly sheepishly. In the theatre she is completely still for an hour, and then entirely animated for the twenty minutes it takes to walk to dinner. Jasmin is the only woman here who takes notes on a paper napkin.

Dinner is informal by design. She prefers eating well somewhere small to eating adequately somewhere famous, and she is happy to walk fifteen minutes to get there. The conversation goes sideways constantly and she keeps track of every thread. Around midnight she slows down at last and becomes quieter and rather affectionate. What happens next is left where it belongs, with you, and she takes it lightly either way.