Lea, the soft entry in a firm ledger

About Lea

Every serious roster needs one companion who disarms rather than impresses, and here that entry reads Lea. She is 161 cm, petite, with wavy auburn hair and hazel eyes, 23 years old and constitutionally incapable of a cold hello. Guests who dread the first five minutes of any arrangement discover she has dissolved them before the coats are dealt with.

Her tastes run domestic and cultured at once. She studies interior design, throws pots badly and happily at a ceramics studio, and takes theatre seriously enough to have opinions about second acts. Spontaneity is her engine; the evening you planned is a draft she will improve. English fluent, charm involuntary, attention complete. The design habit is practical, she will quietly rearrange a suite's lamps within minutes of arriving and the room will be better for it, and the ceramics keep her humble, her word, since the pots have opinions of their own.

St James's is her stage in this ledger, the clubland streets where London still dresses for dinner. Her ideal arrangement bends around a curtain, an early supper at Wiltons on Jermyn Street, oysters and the sort of service that remembers the century, then the play at whichever theatre your tickets name, and the quiet walk to a hotel on the Mall side afterwards. No tickets? She will happily let the supper run to three unhurried hours instead.

She keeps her page under St James's. The rates ladder is public and plain, and a booking message with a date gets her best reply, quickly.

How her evening opens

Lea plans beautifully around curtain times, tell her the theatre and she will build the evening either side of it. She books ahead for weekends; midweek is kinder to late deciders.

Every figure she works to sits on the statement, and the rest of the account is one message away.

An evening with Lea

Lea's ideal evening keeps theatre hours. Six o'clock sharp at Wiltons, because pre-curtain suppers should be early and slightly indulgent, she orders the Dover sole and steals exactly one oyster from your plate as a matter of tradition. Then the short walk up through clubland while the streetlamps come on, her arm in yours, the day audibly falling off you both.

The play itself she watches properly, no whispering, though her interval verdicts are worth the ticket price. Afterwards comes the slow part, a nightcap near the hotel, the unpicking of the plot and then of the evening generally. She is warm, easy and fully present until the agreed hour, and she remembers what you saw together, months later, which regulars find quietly devastating.