The Square Mile after close of play, EC2 to EC4: an escort to your City hotel

Five hotels inside the Square Mile

We name them to help you place them on a map. None of the five has any connection with us, and she comes in as your guest, just as a colleague joining you for a drink would.

The Ned, EC2R 8AJ, on Poultry: Lutyens built it as a bank's head office, and the old strongroom below ground now serves drinks. Andaz London Liverpool Street, EC2M 7QN, the former Great Eastern Hotel beside the station, with a Masonic temple still hidden inside. Pan Pacific London, EC3A 7AB, a tower on Bishopsgate with a quiet plaza at its foot. The Four Seasons at Ten Trinity Square, EC3N 4AJ, in the old Port of London Authority building, looking across at the Tower. Montcalm Royal London House, EC2A 1DX, on the northern edge at Finsbury Square, with a roof terrace.

Business apartments around Moorgate and Aldgate are handled no differently: the building, the apartment number and your full name, confirmed once.

Bank, St Paul's, Liverpool Street

Bank is practically underneath The Ned, 1 minute away, and a knot of lines meet there, the DLR among them. From the cathedral side of the district, St Paul's is roughly 5 minutes on foot. Liverpool Street stands about 7 minutes from the Bishopsgate towers and right against the Andaz, with the Elizabeth line and the main line alongside the Underground.

Trains from Stansted terminate at Liverpool Street too, and the Elizabeth line from there runs straight to Heathrow. Many City guests arrive through one of those two doors.

Allow an hour

Most of the rota lives in the West End and the western districts, so the City is a longer drive than Mayfair or Soho. The desk asks you to allow an hour from confirmation, and often it is less. Between six and half past seven on weekdays the roads in are slow; after nine, and all weekend, they are clear and the time shortens.

The sequence is the one used everywhere: name, hotel, room, each checked a single time over WhatsApp or Telegram, then an exact time in writing. The journey is inside Zone 1 and costs you nothing extra. Payment is simple too: the agreed fee, given to her by you, in person, once she is there.

Who writes from EC2, EC3 and EC4

Business travellers, overwhelmingly. Bankers, lawyers and insurers in London for three nights of meetings, whose days end with a client dinner and whose evenings, after that, are their own. Guests off a late Stansted train who took a room beside Liverpool Street. And the weekend guest who booked a City hotel because the room rates fall on Friday, then found that the Square Mile on a Saturday night is wonderfully calm.

When the client dinner ends at ten

A typical City request arrives at about nine in the evening. The dinner is nearly over, the client is in a taxi, and the guest would like two hours of company that has nothing to do with the deal. He writes from the restaurant: the Andaz, two hours, from half past ten. Henrietta confirms, names the companion and the time. He walks back through the lit arcades of Leadenhall Market, is in his room by twenty past ten, and at 22:29 there is a knock. They go down for one drink in the hotel bar, then back upstairs to talk until half past twelve.

A companion at the table

Some City guests would rather not dine alone at all. A companion can join a business dinner as your guest, well briefed and at ease with a table of strangers, on the dinner booking of four hours at £900. Tell the desk the restaurant, the dress code and anything you would like her to know about the company, and she arrives ready for it.

Nearest home districts

No one on the rota lives inside the Square Mile. The closest are the Covent Garden companions Karolina and Tina, a straight drive east along the Strand and Fleet Street, and Jasmin in Soho, a stop or two away on the Elizabeth line. Every name on the rota will come to a City hotel at the same rate.

Beyond the City boundary

South across London Bridge, the Shard and the Bankside hotels are five minutes away by car. West along Fleet Street, Covent Garden and then Soho take over the late evening. And from Liverpool Street, the Elizabeth line runs directly to the Heathrow hotels, where a booking is never shorter than three hours.