Tiffany, companion in Camden Town

About Tiffany

Petite is the word for her build and it sits oddly beside 169 cm, a contradiction Tiffany gave up explaining years ago. Her chocolate brown hair is long and worn loose, her eyes are brown, and she has the light frame of somebody who has always been able to slip through a crowd without touching anyone. She dresses with an eye for texture rather than logo: corduroy, wool, a vintage jacket with a repaired lining. At twenty four she looks like she belongs in the part of Camden that existed before the market did.

She is gentle, observant and drier than she first appears. She has English alone and keeps her voice low, which makes people lean in and drop their own. Traditional music is the thing she loves and will not be teased out of, the kind played in a room by people who know each other, and she is perfectly aware that this is an unusual enthusiasm for a woman her age. She is easy company for somebody who does not want to shout all evening.

Her Camden night is often at Cecil Sharp House on Regent's Park Road, ten minutes from the station, a nineteen thirties hall with a painted mural at one end where the English folk tradition has had its headquarters for ninety years and where the dancing is genuinely open to anybody. She comes up from Soho, one straight run on the Northern line and about fifteen minutes. Afterwards she likes the streets between there and Primrose Hill, which are quiet enough at eleven to hear your own conversation.

What is on in the hall that week is the first thing she looks up for anyone who asks. A night sent through to the desk gets that answer, and the Camden Town page fills in the quieter streets between the station and Primrose Hill.

Asking for her

Tiffany prefers an evening with something happening in it rather than a bar and a clock, and she will tell you what is on before she says yes. Two hours at £500 covers a hall and a walk; three is better.

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 Tiffany

Half seven, a hall with a sprung floor and a hundred people who have never met, and a caller who assumes you will pick it up as you go. Tiffany does not warn you about this in advance, which is deliberate. She is patient, she counts under her breath, and she is completely unbothered by anybody getting it wrong, herself included.

By ten the music has stopped and the street outside is dark and residential and oddly peaceful for Camden. She likes to walk from there rather than get in anything, up towards the hill or back down to the lock depending on where you are staying. The conversation on that walk is usually about what you have just done, and she is good at letting it wander.