Nora, companion in Park Lane

About Nora

Nora keeps unusual hours and it shows in how well she wears an evening. At 166 cm she is athletically built, the honey blonde hair long, the hazel eyes changing with whatever the room happens to be doing to the light. She dresses cleanly and a little severely: a plain dark dress, no pattern anywhere, a coat cut close. She has the posture of somebody who has never slouched in her life and the calm of somebody who was awake at six.

Her manner is direct without being brisk. Her English, and she has no other, is economical, so what she does say carries. She is genuinely interested in how people manage their time, which is an odd subject until you are in it, and then it is the most interesting conversation of the month. She runs in the park most mornings and she is entirely unsmug about it.

Park Lane is the address she likes for a long dinner, and the first floor dining room at W1K 1PN is where she takes it, on the Hyde Park side with the windows facing the trees. She orders simply and finishes what she orders. Paddington is home, a short run down the Bayswater Road, and she arrives without ever appearing to have travelled. Afterwards she likes the crossing into the park itself, as far as the Dell if the gates are still open.

She is one of the companions kept for Park Lane, and each length is spelled out at rates. Your date, addressed to booking, reaches Delphine.

• Athletic, 166 cm, long honey blonde hair
• Hazel eyes that change with the light in a room
• Twenty six; economical English, nothing wasted
• Paddington based, a short run along Bayswater Road
• Long dinners, early nights, the park when it is open

Arranging her evening

Nora finishes earlier than most and starts earlier too, usually seven o'clock, which suits a proper dinner. Delphine will take the date and the address and confirm the same evening.

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 Nora

Seven o'clock, a window table on the park side, and Nora already there with her coat over the chair. She does not do a warm up. The first question is a real one and she waits for the whole answer, which takes most people by surprise and then puts them entirely at ease.

She eats well and drinks one glass, and she is the best listener in the house on the subject of work, which is what most people actually want to talk about and pretend they do not. By ten the conversation has gone somewhere neither of you expected. She likes to cross into the park afterwards while the gates are open, walking as far as the water. Whatever follows is your decision and she will not steer it.