6 on file
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 resemblance ends.
Octavia pairs them below by temperament, which tells you more than any shade. Two keep score at tennis. Two would rather sit in the dark and listen, to a film or to a piano. Two make a table laugh, at very different volumes and for very different reasons.
Membership follows the facts in each file, nothing looser. Every companion here travels to hotels and residences across central London.
Angelika, 172 cm and athletic, plays tennis most mornings and spends the last hour of the day at the Royal Academy, disputing the wall labels. She lives in Mayfair, close to Burlington House. Milena, 175 cm and curvy, plays just as hard, throws uneven bowls on a potter's wheel, and takes her martini at Dukes, tucked into St James's Place, mixed beside the table and very cold. Ask her view on a second and she will give it.
Danielle, 170 cm, prefers a single-screen cinema and books an early showing at the Curzon on Curzon Street, then supper close by to take the ending apart. A slim book of poems lives in her coat. Karolina, 174 cm, still sits at the piano most days and begins at St James's Church on Piccadilly whenever a recital is on, and then one glass at The Ritz, in the Rivoli.
Roxi, 168 cm, boxes three mornings a week and eats with real appetite at Hawksmoor on Air Street, a few steps from Piccadilly Circus. Expect a podcast recommendation before dessert. Violetta, 178 cm and the tallest woman in the house, swims long distances in cold water, knows stand-up timing better than most comedians, and tells jokes so dry they arrive on the walk home.
Black hair asks very little of a wardrobe, and the six dress accordingly: a black column, a charcoal wrap, dark gold, or one bright colour worn with nothing else beside it. If a dress code applies, name it when you first write. Octavia passes it on word for word.
Angelika is the one resident of the quarter and walks to most introductions from her Mayfair door. Violetta crosses from Belgravia, Karolina from Covent Garden, Roxi from Pimlico, and Danielle and Milena both from South Kensington. Every one of them reaches Albemarle Street quickly by cab, and travel inside the first two zones is part of the fee rather than an addition to it.
Height puts four of the six, Angelika, Karolina, Milena and Violetta, on the statuesque page as well. Roxi, Milena and Danielle share the curvaceous line; Violetta and Karolina share the slim and slender one. By decade: Angelika and Roxi, early twenties; Danielle, Karolina and Milena, late twenties; Violetta, thirties.
Every introduction begins at £600. Angelika and Milena are among the first names Octavia proposes for the hotel introduction, an hour or two at your address in W1 or SW1. A four hour dinner is £1,800, and every other format sits on rates. Write through booking with the name, the date and the hotel.
Mention the companion who caught your eye, or describe the evening instead. Octavia knows who is free tonight and who suits a long table.