Golden blonde, blue eyed, and 170 cm of curvy, well carried presence. Nancy wears her hair long and loose and her clothes with the confidence of somebody who stopped following anything years ago: a red dress that has been to a hundred dinners, a coat she had made, good shoes she walks miles in. Early thirties. She is the most openly glamorous name here and the one least interested in being stared at.

Her English is warm, fast and very funny, and she has a rare knack for turning a shy guest talkative inside half an hour. She is direct about what she enjoys and equally direct about what she does not, which people find a relief. She goes to the opera properly, cooks for eight without breaking a sweat, and has strong loyalties to a handful of rooms in WC2 that have looked after her for a decade.

Her Covent Garden evening is Balthazar on Russell Street, the big brasserie with the mirrors and the noise, where dinner at nine feels like being in a film and the staff know her by name without making a production of it. She likes a booth. She has lived off the Piazza long enough to time it, and she will take you out through it while it empties and have you back at your hotel in ten minutes.

A nine o'clock table with a day's notice is the version of her evening that works best. WC2, the theatres and the others who cover it are set out on the Covent Garden page. Ask the desk for a specific night with the hotel and you will get her real availability, not a hopeful version of it.

Nothing has been written up under Nancy yet, which is usually what discretion looks like. A note goes on the board only when a client sends one in writing, she agrees to it, and the office has checked that it reads as a first name, a month and nothing private.