The overnight engagement: an evening that is allowed to reach the morning

A typical engagement starts at seven or eight. A drink in a hotel bar, then dinner at a table you have chosen, then perhaps a last glass somewhere quieter before the bars close. After that, nothing is timed and nobody hurries. Breakfast arrives at the hour you set the night before, and she leaves at the time agreed, having had her coffee and read the headlines over your shoulder.

The clock starts when she arrives, not when the table was booked, so a late dinner costs the morning nothing.

Some guests prefer the order reversed: a quiet supper sent up to the suite, a film chosen together, a long conversation with the curtains open on the lights of Piccadilly, and a proper restaurant saved for the following evening. The night is yours to arrange.

An hour can be arranged within the hour. A night asks a little more of a companion's diary, and a day's notice lets her prepare properly: clothes for dinner and for the morning, a lighter day beforehand, perhaps a table she already knows near your hotel. Same-day overnights do happen, and Octavia will tell you plainly whether the companion you have in mind is free.

Over ten hours, space becomes a courtesy. A junior suite with a sitting room at Brown's or The Ritz, a room looking over Green Park at The Athenaeum, or a corner of the carriage house at The Stafford all suit a long evening better than a compact double. A private residence is just as welcome, with the street and door confirmed once in writing.

The notebook describes the small palaces of St James's at greater length, and the caviar supper is one way to begin a night that has no reason to end early.

At one in the morning, calm matters more than sparkle. Danielle has a quiet voice, a pocket anthology and a liking for a film before dinner. Violetta, very tall and in her early thirties, keeps her slow smile and her driest remarks for later in the night. Patricia carries a secondhand detective story in her bag and is gentle company over breakfast. Michelle is easy to talk to at any hour and takes an afternoon into an evening without effort. Danielle, Patricia and Michelle are all in their late twenties.

A night may equally begin at midnight, once a banquet or a long flight is behind you, in which case it ends at ten. Tell Octavia the hour, and she arranges the rest from there. The ladder, and the terms for moving or cancelling, are printed on the rates page; booking covers the single check made before she sets out.

Mornings around Piccadilly are worth getting up for. Room service at Brown's comes on a trolley with the newspapers folded beside the pot. At The Ritz you may take breakfast downstairs instead, in the restaurant above the park, if you would like to be seen out together. Or walk: The Wolseley serves breakfast from early in the morning, and Jermyn Street is almost empty at that hour. Whatever the morning holds, she leaves at the minute agreed, and the check-out is yours.

The overnight is the same arrangement as a dinner, simply given more room. It remains time and companionship only; the courtesies do not change, and any request beyond them closes the engagement at once, with the fee kept.