Escorts in Knightsbridge, SW1X and SW7, with the department store lit up like a liner

The department store with the green awnings is the landmark, floodlit at night and visible from the top of the escalators at the station, and the fashion store on the Sloane Street corner is its sharper younger rival. Between and behind them runs a grid that changes character every fifty metres: Sloane Street with its flagships in a straight line down to the square, Beauchamp Place with its restaurants and its pronunciation trap, and the white terraces of Cadogan Place and Hans Place where nothing at all is happening on purpose.

The park edge is the other half of the postcode. Knightsbridge the road runs along the bottom of Hyde Park from the Corner to the Albert Hall end, and the hotels on that side have north facing rooms looking over the trees and south facing rooms looking at the shops. Which one you want depends on whether you came here to rest or to spend.

A great many Knightsbridge bookings begin with a day of shopping and a very tired guest. The plan is almost always the same: a drink downstairs at seven, dinner somewhere within five minutes, and back to the suite before midnight. Nobody here wants to cross London after dark, and nobody needs to.

The second pattern is the long stay. Suites in this postcode are taken by the week more often than anywhere else on this site, and a guest three days into one tends to want company who can be good at a quiet evening as easily as a loud one. Bella books more four hour dinner dates at £1,300 in SW1X than in any other postcode, usually starting at seven and ending with coffee that nobody hurries.

SW1X 7LA has the best park facing rooms in the district and a lobby that has watched a century of people arrive. SW1X 7RL keeps a rooftop pool with a roof that slides open in summer and a blue lit bar downstairs that is still one of the best rooms in London to be seen not trying.

SW7 1DW is the modern one, all dark wood and silver, with a spa two floors below ground and a small cinema beside it. SW1X 9PY looks over the private gardens of Cadogan Place and puts its health club on the top floor with the windows facing the park.

SW1X 7LY occupies an old station building on the Corner and runs to jazz, cigars and a heated terrace. SW3 1PT is the quiet one, tucked into Beaufort Gardens where the taxis do not go. All six are printed as addresses rather than names. Not one has an arrangement of any sort with this office, and nothing about your evening is said at a desk. She asks for you at reception, or takes the lift unaccompanied once Bella has your surname and the number that belongs to it.

Barely 1 minute from the shops, the station drops you onto the Piccadilly line through an exit that lands inside the department store without crossing a road. Roughly 5 minutes east along the park railings lies Hyde Park Corner, the one for Mayfair. Some 9 minutes south sits Sloane Square, Circle and District, and the better choice for Chelsea and the river.

A car brings her across, travel over the first two zones already accounted for. Confirmed tonight, SW1X is generally about an hour off, more when the Brompton Road is solid with traffic, and Bella posts the exact time in the chat once she is on her way; confirmed on Tuesday for Saturday, she is there when Saturday says. Her fee is yours to give her, at the door, and the room had been written out before she moved.

Bianka offered this one, with a vintage clasp bag as evidence. A guest in a park facing suite at the Mandarin, four hours from seven, who had spent the afternoon buying things he did not need and wanted somebody to be sensible with.

She read the wine list properly, ordered one bottle instead of the three he was considering, and steered dinner to a small room on Beauchamp Place where the waiters knew her name. Afterwards they took the lift back up and watched the park go completely black from the window, which he later told Bella was the best part of the trip. Four hours, £1,300, and a request for the same again in November.

Three of the women on these pages give Knightsbridge as their address. Bianka knows every wine list within the postcode, Margo is the one for a night that runs past midnight, and Sonya turns stillness into an event, which a small table rewards.

From Belgravia, just to the east, come Lea with her paint chart, Patricia with her watercolours and Violetta with her deadpan timing. From Chelsea, a short drive south west, Cindy has an eye for exactly where the light falls and Michelle holds opinions about garnish that she is happy to defend. Eight names within a short drive, which is unusual even in SW1.

North across the railings lies Hyde Park and its whole perimeter. East at the Corner the hotel row of Park Lane begins, and a few minutes beyond it the trees of Green Park. Carry on north east and you are in Mayfair within about ten minutes by car.