Nora, companion in Hampstead

About Nora

Honey blonde hair, long and pushed back off her face more often than styled, and hazel eyes that change with the weather: Nora looks like somebody who has just come in from outside, because she usually has. Athletic and 166 cm, she has the light step of somebody who walks everywhere by choice. Her clothes are chosen for the hill: a proper coat, a dress that works with boots, a scarf that has seen worse weather than this. At twenty six she has no interest at all in an evening that keeps her indoors from beginning to end.

Her company is easy and direct, funny in an offhand way, with none of the performance that a first meeting sometimes brings out in people. She has English and nothing else, spoken plainly, and she is comfortable with a silence on a footpath, which is a small thing and turns out to matter a great deal. She swims outdoors all year, a habit she will describe without recommending, and she knows the heath well enough to tell you which pond is which in the dark.

Her Hampstead evening tends to begin at the Holly Bush, up the steps off Heath Street and hidden in a lane behind the church, a low ceilinged eighteenth century pub with no music in it and no need of any. She comes across from Paddington, which is a change at Baker Street and about forty minutes, or twenty five in a car up Fitzjohn's Avenue when the traffic is kind. Afterwards the heath is ten minutes away and the village closes early, so she plans an evening that ends well before the last train rather than sprinting for it.

Evenings up here end earlier than they would in town, which is exactly why they never feel hurried. Tell the desk when you can start and whether a hill bothers you, and Nora does the rest; the lanes, the pubs and the hotels are covered on the Hampstead page.

Asking for her

Nora asks for an early start in winter, since the village goes quiet by eleven and the good part of it happens before that. Two hours at £500 covers a walk and a table; three is better if you want both properly.

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 Nora

Half five in autumn and the lanes are already lit. Nora comes up the steps rather than round by the road, which is steeper and shorter and she thinks builds character. The pub at the top has three small rooms and she will steer you to the one at the back with the fire, where a conversation stays where you put it.

Two drinks and an hour later she wants air, so it is out past the church and along the edge of the heath while the last dog walkers are coming off it. She points out the ponds in the dark with complete confidence. Back in the village by nine, a table somewhere on the High Street, and the last stretch downhill to your hotel taken slowly because there is no reason to hurry.