Danielle, companion in Kentish Town

About Danielle

Long black hair, straight and unfussy, is the first thing Danielle puts in order and the last thing she thinks about. She is 170 cm, curvy, with brown eyes that narrow whenever something amuses her, which happens more often than her composure suggests. Her style is plain in the expensive sense: dark denim or a simple dress, a wool coat that has survived several winters of being left in the wrong pub, boots she can stand in for two hours without complaint. At twenty nine she dresses for the room she is actually going to, which in Kentish Town means somewhere with a sticky floor at eleven and a good kitchen at midnight.

She is wry, attentive and hard to fluster. She has no second language and needs none: her English runs to understatement that takes some people a whole first drink to notice. She listens closely enough that you will catch her repeating something you said an hour earlier, slightly improved. Music is her territory, the live kind rather than the streamed kind, and she will tell you without apology that she would rather stand at the back of a small room than sit in a good seat at a big one.

Her Kentish Town night is usually built around the O2 Forum on Highgate Road, two minutes from the station and one stop up from Camden, where the balcony is worth the stairs and the sound is better than the outside of the building promises. She comes north from South Kensington, forty minutes or so by train and quite a lot more by car on a match night or a Friday, so she sets out early and thinks of the journey as part of the evening. Afterwards she prefers the low tables along the Fortess Road side to anything back in town.

The stretch she works and the hotels she can reach on foot are mapped on the Kentish Town page. Mention the gig when you message the evening desk: doors times, support acts and the last train north all get taken into account before she proposes an hour.

Asking for her

Danielle asks for the doors time rather than the start time, because support acts run late and she would rather not be hurried. Three hours at £700 takes in the show and a late table afterwards.

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 Danielle

Doors at seven, so she suggests meeting at six, which gives you an hour and a drink before anybody has to shout over anything. Danielle will have listened to the support act on the way up and formed a verdict she is willing to revise. Inside she heads for the left hand side of the balcony out of habit.

By half ten the room is emptying onto Highgate Road and she is in no hurry to join it. There is a table she likes with a kitchen that keeps going, ten minutes' walk and slightly uphill, and the conversation on the way there is usually the best part of the night. She will check the last train home for you before you think to check it yourself.