Call OutsMeter starts at£250

Ten call outs, from a single hour to a whole weekend

Every booking here runs the same way: one message to Etta, a plain reply the same evening, one check against the name on your room, and a companion at the door at the agreed hour. What changes between call outs is how long she stays, how far she travels and how much needs planning.

Most first evenings out here are a hotel call out in town or a dinner date with the river in front of it. Anyone flying in the morning tends to want a travel companion or an overnight, because both are built backwards from a departure time rather than forwards from a drink.

Ten shapes an evening takes

Ten call outs, one ladder

01Hotel outcall companionshipHotel call outsThe commonest booking here is also the plainest. You are in a hotel off junction 5 or junction 6 for two nights and a meeting, the working day has finished earlier than the evening needs to, and...5 suited to it 02Dinner date companionshipDinner datesA dinner date is not an hour with food in the middle of it. It is four hours at £900 with a table at the centre, and out here that shape matters more than it would in town, because the kitchens...5 suited to it 03Overnight companionshipOvernightsAn overnight is ten hours at £1,800 and it is the one booking here that stops being about the clock. It usually begins with dinner somewhere and ends with the two of you eating breakfast in a...5 suited to it 04Girlfriend experience companionshipThe girlfriend eveningThe name is clumsy and the thing itself is simple. It is an evening arranged so that nothing about it feels transacted: no performance, no running order, no sense that a clock is being consulted....5 suited to it 05Travel companionshipTravel companionFlights create dead hours at both ends and nobody plans for them. You land at nine with nothing to do until a meeting at eleven the next morning, or you are stuck a night early before a dawn...5 suited to it 06Business event companionshipBusiness eveningsThe Thames Valley runs on evenings like this. A supplier dinner at the end of a conference day, an awards night in a hotel ballroom, a leaving do for somebody two grades above you, a table of...5 suited to it 07Duo companionshipDuo eveningsA duo is one evening with two companions in it rather than one. It is dinner, conversation and company with three people at the table instead of two, and it is booked, timed and paid for on...6 suited to it 08Companionship for couplesCouples eveningsSome evenings are arranged by two people rather than one. A couple books a companion for dinner and conversation, the three of you spend the evening together, and it runs on the same ladder, the...5 suited to it 09Night out companionshipNights outA night out here is not a London night out and pretending otherwise ruins it. There is no crawl to be had, the last orders are early, and a plan made at seven involves walking past three full...5 suited to it 10Extended booking companionshipExtended staysSome trips out here are longer than a night. A project that keeps you in a business park hotel for a week, a wedding at a country house with two days either side of it, a spell between lets while...5 suited to it

Sorted by the notice they want

Three of the ten can be arranged the same evening: a hotel call out, the girlfriend evening and a night out. Dinner dates, duo evenings and evenings booked by couples want a day, mostly because a table has to exist first.

Overnights, business nights, travel and extended stays want longer. Her own diary is cleared around them, and anything airport shaped has a flight time setting the pace.

Distance is the part people get wrong

In London a booking is an hour and a short taxi. Between Maidenhead and Terminal 5 it is an hour and a drive, and the drive is not decorative. Two hours at £500 works in a town centre or in Windsor, where everything worth reaching is a walk away. Three hours at £700 is the honest length for Langley, Burnham, Maidenhead and the airport edge, because the journey sits inside the booking.

Etta will say so before you agree to anything. Nobody here benefits from a guest discovering at half eight that his table is fifteen minutes away in the wrong direction.

Names at the foot of each page

Each call out page ends with a handful of companions who suit that shape of evening, chosen from what they have told the desk about their own nights rather than from a photograph. Treat them as a place to start. Anyone on who is on can be asked for any of the ten, and Etta says straight whether the week has room.

One ladder, whichever shape you pick

The figures do not move between these pages. An hour opens at £250, two hours is £500, a dinner date is £900 and the ten hour overnight is £1,800, with every rung on rates. The fee is handed to your companion in person as the evening begins, exactly the sum Etta put in writing.

Where a call out can begin

Anywhere this desk covers, from the trading estate hotels in Slough Central to a village pub with aircraft over the churchyard. Her travel out from London is inside the figure. Send the shape, the night, the length and the hotel in one line, and booking explains the rest.

The light is on

Flag her down

Give a town and give an hour. What comes back has a name in it, the minute she can knock and the figure for those hours, all three in the one reply.

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