Samanta, companion in Kings Cross

About Samanta

Long dark brown hair and a slim 174 cm frame make Samanta easy to find in a crowd she has no interest in being part of. Her eyes are brown and level, and she has the habit of looking at whoever is speaking rather than at the room. She dresses cleanly and a little severely, in long coats and flat shoes, with the one exception of a scarf she treats as a personality. At twenty seven she has the manner of a woman who has worked out that being early is a form of politeness.

In company she is thoughtful and a touch sardonic, generous with attention and stingy with flattery, which most people find refreshing within about ten minutes. English is her only language and she is at her best with it in writing, which makes her a better texter than most people are talkers. Books are her weakness, secondhand ones especially, and she will walk a long way for a shelf she has not seen before. She is calm with a guest who is tired and quick with one who is not.

Her Kings Cross evening usually begins on the towpath at Word on the Water, the bookbarge moored below Granary Square with a stove going inside and somebody playing on the roof in summer. She comes over from Mayfair, four stops on the Victoria line and no changes, which takes about twelve minutes and beats anything on wheels. From the barge it is five minutes up into the old goods yard, where the brick has been scrubbed and relit and the restaurants stay open later than the neighbourhood's reputation suggests.

She answers a message properly, which is rarer than it ought to be, so begin with a time and a meeting point sent to the evening desk. Samanta is generally there before you are. The towpath, the goods yard and the rooms above both belong to the Kings Cross page.

Asking for her

Samanta is straightforward to arrange and prefers a clear meeting point to a vague one, ideally on the canal side rather than the concourse. An hour at £250 suits an arrival, three at £700 an evening.

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 Samanta

Half six, and she is on the towpath rather than in the station, standing by a barge full of books with a cat asleep in the window. Samanta will find you something on the shelves within four minutes, and she is usually right about it. The water is quiet at that hour and the office crowd has gone the other way.

Up the steps into the yard afterwards, where the brick is floodlit and the fountains are still going in the square. Dinner is booked somewhere she has used before, because she does not experiment on other people's evenings. Later, if there is time, there is the long way back along the canal towards the lock, which takes twenty minutes and is worth doing once in the dark.