Escorts in Covent Garden, WC2E, as the Society arranges them after dark

The Piazza was laid out for the Earl of Bedford by Inigo Jones, the first formal square in London and the model for every one that followed, including the ones on the western half of this map. The church on its west side is the actors' church, its walls covered in small memorials to people who were famous for one season. The market hall in the middle sold vegetables until the 1970s and now sells everything else.

Bow Street runs along the eastern edge. The opera house is on one side of it and, opposite, a former magistrates' court has been turned into a hotel, which is the sort of joke this district makes without appearing to notice. South of the Piazza the lanes narrow towards the Strand and the river, and one great hotel stands at the end of a short court where traffic is directed to keep right, the only place in the country where that instruction is given.

Guests who write from WC2E are there for a performance more often than not. The rest are staying by the river on business and have discovered that the walk from the Strand to a table takes four minutes in any direction.

No hotel in WC2 has any dealings with the Society. The list exists to make the district legible, and your companion arrives at whichever of them you are in as your own guest.

WC2R 0EZ is six minutes south of the Piazza and its river rooms are the best address in WC2. WC2B 4BZ occupies a former newspaper building at the Aldwych curve, four minutes away. WC2E 7AW faces the opera house across Bow Street and is the shortest walk to a curtain in London.

WC2N 4HX sits five minutes west towards Trafalgar Square, and WC2H 9HB keeps a quiet corner on Monmouth Street with a drawing room upstairs that guests tend to keep to themselves. Flats above the lanes are visited on the same terms.

The Piccadilly line stops a minute from the Piazza at Covent Garden, four stations from Green Park. Leicester Square is four minutes west for the Northern and Piccadilly lines, and Charing Cross six minutes south for the Bakerloo, the Northern and the main line platforms.

She is driven in from the western half of the map, with the driver paid by the Society wherever the address sits inside the first two zones. The clock that governs this district is the curtain. For a performance, write to Cressida during the afternoon: she will have a companion with you an hour before it starts, which is enough for a drink and the walk, and she will book the supper for afterwards at the same time, because at eleven o'clock every table in WC2 is spoken for.

Before anyone sets off she writes back which hotel, which room, and the name it was booked under. For a theatre seat you have already bought, tell her the row and the number as well, and your companion will simply be in it. She is paid directly by you at the moment she reaches you.

A guest with two stalls seats wrote at three. Cressida proposed Karolina, who has opinions about the house and keeps them mostly to herself, and the dinner date at £1,800, since four hours covers a drink, three acts and a supper without anyone checking the time.

They met at half past six in a bar on Wellington Street, walked round to Bow Street with ten minutes to spare, and she said nothing at all during the second interval, which he later described as the best part of the evening. Supper was at a counter near the market at a quarter past eleven, booked that afternoon. The car took her back west at half past midnight.

Karolina, Nancy and Tina give Covent Garden as home. Karolina plays the piano and can tell you what the orchestra got wrong. Nancy is the sunniest temperament on the roster and is at her best at a counter. Tina is the readiest to say yes to a plan made late in the day.

Molly, Jasmin and Tiffany come across from Soho. From the western half of the map, Samanta and Angelika are driven in from Mayfair, and the same road serves an evening that begins in W1 and ends in WC2.

Leave the Piazza westwards and you are in the theatre streets, then at the Circus, then among the hotels of Piccadilly after fifteen minutes on foot. South west across Haymarket lies St James's, and beyond it Green Park. The Society's own square, Berkeley Square, is twelve to fifteen minutes by car at that hour, and often less. For where to sit when supper is the point of the evening, see the corner table.