12 distinctions
A distinction, in this house, is a fact you could confirm across a table. The colour of a woman's hair by daylight. The line of her figure in a well cut coat. The decade of adult life she is in. Twelve such facts sort the twenty-eight companions in the introductions, and none of them rests on anything Octavia has not seen for herself.
Treat them as a shortcut, never as a verdict. One name may sit under three distinctions at once; that is accurate filing, not a thin roster. When a page narrows the field, open her profile before you write. The profile is where she is actually described.
Four women hold this distinction, and the word blonde covers each of them only loosely. Cindy wears hers long and wavy. Nancy is golden, Nora is honey, Thea is caramel. Octavia records every shade...
Brown is the broadest distinction in the house. Fifteen of the twenty-eight companions wear it. Vanessa carries the lightest version, a sandy balayage; Stacy the darkest, near-black once the lamps...
Black hair is the easiest colour to pick out across a crowded room and the most exacting to photograph well. Six companions wear it, every one of them long, most of them dead straight. There the...
Three names, and a colour that changes with every room. Luna's is the deepest, a dark auburn that shows its red outdoors at night. Lea's falls in long auburn waves. Patricia's is auburn brown,...
Petite describes a fine, compact frame rather than one measurement. Heights on this page run from 158 cm to 163, with a single exception: Tiffany, at 169 cm, is filed here for her fine bones...
At a crowded reception a tall companion is easy to find again, which is a more practical virtue than it sounds. Nine women in the house stand at 172 cm or more in flat shoes. Violetta, at 178 cm,...
Curvaceous is the fuller, classical silhouette, and the house describes it the way a good tailor would: by how a coat sits and a dress falls, and not by numbers. Ten companions hold the...
A slender build is the easiest to dress and the hardest to describe without cliché, so the house keeps it brief: ten companions with a slim, narrow frame. The smallest is Lucy at 163 cm, the...
Athletic, as the house uses the word, is not a measurement taken at a gym. It describes five women whose build comes from something they do, and whose energy runs from a morning walk to a late...
The early twenties are the years in which taste stops being borrowed. Each of the ten companions on this page is between twenty-two and twenty-four, an adult whose identification Octavia has seen...
By the late twenties most women have hosted as many evenings as they have attended, and it shows in small things: where she sits, what she orders, how comfortably she lets a silence run. Fourteen...
Four companions, aged thirty to thirty-two, and one of the first pages Octavia turns to when an invitation is formal. By thirty, each has sat through enough dinners to know that the best guest is...
Blondes holds four names. Brunettes is the largest page, fifteen women from sandy balayage to a brown that reads black by night. Raven haired gathers six in true black. Auburn and red is three, the scarcest colouring on file and the one a camera reports least honestly.
Petite means a fine, compact frame. Statuesque begins at 172 cm and ends, for now, at 178. Curvaceous is the fuller classical silhouette, slim and slender the long narrow one, and toned and athletic belongs to women whose discipline, a racquet, a saddle, a barre, shows in the way they stand. Octavia took every height herself.
Age has three pages. Late twenties is the largest, thirties and beyond the smallest, early twenties somewhere between. Each describes a stage of adult life and the manner that usually comes with it. Every companion is an adult whose identification Octavia has seen, and the age pages are written about temperament, conversation and taste, and about nothing else.
The fee, first. Every introduction opens at £600 for the hour, whichever page led you to her, and the full ladder is printed on rates. Nor will you find a distinction for origin, or for anything else the house regards as private. Write to Octavia through booking with a name, or with one sentence about the evening, and she will reply with a name of her own.
Mention the companion who caught your eye, or describe the evening instead. Octavia knows who is free tonight and who suits a long table.