Angelika, companion in Camden Town

About Angelika

There is an hour in Camden, after the market shutters come down and before the music starts, when the pavements go back to whoever actually lives on them, and Angelika likes to turn up in the middle of it. Her build is athletic and she wears 172 cm as a matter of habit rather than advantage; the black hair hangs long and straight well past the shoulder, and the brown eyes settle an introduction before she has said a word. Her clothes answer to the pavement first and the room second: a dark dress with room to move in, a coat that can take a shower of rain off the hill, heels low enough to cross Camden High Street in without thinking about it.

Twenty four, direct without ever being blunt, she asks questions in the order a curious person asks them rather than the order politeness would prefer. She has one language, English, and she is exact with it, having picked up the dry register this part of London seems to teach everyone within a year of moving here. She swims most mornings, and it shows in her patience: she can sit through the slow half of an evening without reaching for anything, and she is content to let a conversation wander uphill for an hour before it finds its point.

An evening she builds herself tends to begin at the Roundhouse on Chalk Farm Road, ten minutes north of Camden Town station, where the old engine shed still holds sound in a way no new hall quite manages. She comes up from Mayfair, which is about twenty five minutes if she changes at Euston and considerably longer by car once the High Street knots up around the bridge, so she leaves early and spends the spare quarter hour on the towpath. Afterwards she would rather walk back down Parkway than take anything with wheels, and if your hotel sits by the lock she will steer you onto the canal side of the road.

The lock, the hotels beside it and the streets she crosses fastest are all set out on the Camden Town page. Send a night, an hour and an address to the evening desk; Angelika is the sort to tell you herself if the timing is tighter than it looks.

Asking for her

Angelika likes a start time with room for the walk in, so an hour of notice is the minimum and an afternoon of it is better. Two hours at £500 covers a show and a drink after it without anyone watching the clock.

Every figure she works to is already public on the board, and the order of the evening is set out on the booking page.

An evening with Angelika

Say it is a Thursday and the booking starts at eight. Angelika comes in with her coat already unbuttoned, because she has walked the last stretch up from the water and that slope is warmer work than it looks. First drink somewhere with a door onto the street rather than a basement: she likes to see who is going past. By half nine the talk has usually turned to what brought you to Camden at all, and she will have a view on your answer. If there is music on she asks what time the doors are; if there is not, she proposes the long way back over the lock and down Parkway, which adds twelve minutes and is worth every one of them.