Caramel blonde and green eyed, on a curvy 165 cm frame she dresses with obvious pleasure. Thea goes for texture rather than colour: velvet in winter, silk in summer, a coat with a proper collar, and hair worn long and slightly undone. Late twenties. She is the warmest arrival here, the sort who has her coat off and is settled in before you have worked out how the evening began.

English, and a great deal of it, delivered with genuine curiosity. She asks about family and means it, remembers the answers, and she can tell when a guest would rather talk about anything other than work. She grows things, badly, paints furniture, and has a sentimental attachment to restaurants that have not been redecorated since the seventies, of which Kensington still has a few. She will name three of them before the first drink arrives and defend all three.

A W8 evening with her is Maggie Jones's on Old Court Place, behind the church, where the tables are scrubbed pine, the candles are in old bottles and the whole room feels like somebody's overstuffed kitchen. She likes the booth upstairs. She lives just south, in South Kensington, so afterwards she can steer you along Kensington Church Street past the antique shop windows, which are better lit at night than in the day.

Longer bookings suit her, and the antique shop windows on Church Street are better at night anyway. W8, SW7 and who else covers them sit on the Kensington page. Whatever evening you have in mind, booking wants the hotel with it and will come straight back.

Nothing has been written up under Thea 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.