Milena, companion in Islington

About Milena

Striking is the polite word and accurate for once: Milena stands 175 cm and curvy; the black hair is long, straight and undramatic, and the brown eyes are frank rather than flirtatious. She dresses architecturally, in shapes rather than patterns, and she has a weakness for a good coat that she is entirely unrepentant about. Heels are a choice she makes knowing she will be the tallest person in most rooms, and she makes it often. At twenty five she has learned that walking in slowly is worth more than anything she could wear.

She is serious company in the best sense, interested in the actual answer and unimpressed by a clever one. She has the one language, English, spoken with deliberation, leaving room for you to think. Painting is the thing she will lose an hour to, particularly the early twentieth century Italians whose work nobody expects to find in a London square. She is also good at the quiet stretch of an evening, when the talking has done its job and a walk is more use than another drink.

Her Islington evening begins at the Estorick Collection in Canonbury Square, a Georgian house ten minutes from Highbury and Islington station that holds the best collection of modern Italian art in the country and is frequently almost empty. She travels up from South Kensington, which is the Piccadilly line the whole way and about thirty five minutes door to door, or an unpredictable drive once the Angel gyratory is involved. Afterwards it is a short walk back down to Upper Street, where dinner at nine is normal rather than late.

The galleries, the squares and the nearest hotels sit on the Islington page. Name a night and a rough shape for the desk, and Milena fills in the hours with something worth doing; dinner at nine is normal in N1 rather than late, which leaves room to begin quietly.

Asking for her

Milena likes a gallery hour before dinner and will suggest a start time that allows for it, usually late afternoon. The dinner date at £900 is where she is most herself; two hours at £500 is the shorter version.

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 Milena

Five in the afternoon, the house on the square nearly empty, and Milena taking the small upstairs room first because she says the best picture in the building is in it. She does not lecture. She points at one thing, waits, and then asks what you saw, which is a more interesting question than it looks.

Dinner is booked for eight somewhere on the far side of Upper Street, away from the noisier end, and she walks there rather than calling anything. The square, the terraces, the canal end of the road: twenty minutes that make the meal better. She stays put after the plates go, which is the part of an evening she values most and the part most people schedule out of it.