Molly, companion in Angel

About Molly

Nobody arrives in Angel in a hurry if Molly has anything to do with it. Curvy and 164 cm, she has long dark brown hair that waves on its own terms, and brown eyes that do the smiling first. Her clothes have a second hand eye behind them even when they are not: a print nobody else is wearing, a coat with good buttons, a bag she has plainly owned for years. At twenty four she has the confidence of somebody who buys what she likes rather than what is being sold to her that season.

Her manner is open and a little conspiratorial, as though the pair of you had settled something in advance. She has English by itself and talks in stories rather than statements, which makes a long dinner go quickly. She collects small useless beautiful things, knows what they should cost, and will happily spend ten minutes explaining why a chipped plate is worth more than an unchipped one. She is the easiest company here for anybody who finds the first twenty minutes of an evening awkward.

An evening of hers starts in Camden Passage, the narrow lane of antique dealers just off the bottom of Upper Street, two minutes from Angel station, which empties of stalls by evening and fills with small restaurants instead. She comes up from Soho, one straight ride on the Northern line that takes less time than the escalator out at this end, the longest on the network and steep enough to be a talking point. Afterwards she likes the tables in the lane itself, where the light is low and the tourists have all gone back down the hill.

Say roughly what you feel like doing and she comes back with three things you had not thought of, most of them inside two streets. A night sent to the evening desk starts that off; the lane, the small tables and the hotels above them are on the Angel page.

Asking for her

Molly is happiest with an evening that has a start time and no fixed end, and she will pick the table herself if you let her. Two hours at £500 is the short version; most guests book three.

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 Molly

Seven on a Thursday, and she meets you at the top of the lane rather than inside anywhere, because the lane is the point. The shutters are down on the dealers by then, which she thinks improves it: you can see the shape of the passage without the crowd in it, and she will tell you which window had a lamp in it last week.

Dinner is somewhere with eleven tables and a door that sticks. Molly orders as though she is feeding two other people and talks the whole way through it, mostly about things that are not important, which is a skill. Later there is a bar at the Clerkenwell end that stays open past the point of reason, or the walk back up to Upper Street if you would rather finish outside.