Karolina, companion in Bond Street

About Karolina

Long limbed and unhurried, Karolina is 174 cm of slim, straight-backed calm. Her black hair is long and worn without a wave in it, and her brown eyes hold a look most people read as appraising before they realise it is simply attentive. She wears narrow trousers and good knitwear as often as she wears a dress, and she is one of very few women who can make a flat shoe look like the more formal choice. Nothing is fastened, adjusted or checked once she has sat down.

She is quiet until she is not. She speaks only English, choosing her words with care, which makes her occasional bluntness land properly. Her interests are visual: pictures, rooms, the way a thing has been made. She will pick out the one object in a window that costs more than everything around it, every single time, and she will explain why without sounding pleased with herself.

New Bond Street is her territory, and an evening viewing at Sotheby's is her favourite way into a night out. She moves through the rooms slowly, reads every label, and forms opinions she is perfectly willing to defend over dinner afterwards. Covent Garden is home, so she comes across on foot when the weather allows, cutting through the back of Soho rather than walking Oxford Street, which she avoids on principle.

Everything else about Bond Street after six belongs to that page, and the figures to rates. A date given to booking comes back confirmed the same day.

• 174 cm, slim, long limbed and very still
• Brown eyes; long black hair with no wave in it
• Twenty seven; considered English, occasionally blunt
• Covent Garden based, walks across through Soho
• Auction viewings, good rooms, objects she cannot afford

Arranging her evening

Viewings finish early, so Karolina likes a six o'clock start when there is something worth seeing. Delphine will tell you what is on that week and hold the evening around 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 Karolina

The viewing rooms are the part she looks forward to. Karolina walks them at half the speed of everybody else, stops in front of things nobody has stopped at, and leaves with one firm favourite and one strong grievance. She will ask what you liked before she tells you what she thought, and she means the question.

Dinner afterwards is where the evening settles. She eats lightly, drinks one glass, and argues properly, which is to say she changes her mind out loud when you make a decent point. Late on she becomes noticeably softer and less exact. She likes to walk down into Burlington Gardens afterwards, where the shops are shuttered and the street is entirely still. Anything beyond that is yours to decide.