Couples: a companion at a table already set for two

Both of you write, or one writes and the other confirms in the same chat. It takes a line. From there it runs like any other booking on this site: a name, a date, an hour, an address, and the single check that lets a woman travelling alone at ten at night know whose door she is knocking on. If at any point the two of you disagree about the evening, the booking stops there and nothing is owed.

Three people at a table, and usually a walk after it. Couples bookings here are almost without exception dinner: Greenwich with the water in front of it, the terraces on the Isle of Dogs, a long table on the estate. They tend to run three hours rather than two, because the first half hour goes on finding the rhythm and it is a waste to find it and then leave. It is an evening of company and it stays one.

A typical one begins at half past six at Cutty Sark, two minutes from the DLR platform and six minutes under the river from Canary Wharf. The three of you walk up through the market as the stalls close and the light goes over the naval college. A table is held for seven in the village, where the kitchens are unhurried and the rooms are small enough to hear each other across.

Dinner takes you to about half past eight. Then comes the slow part: back along the river to the pier, or up into the park if it is summer and still light. At half past nine she says goodnight at the station and the two of you keep the rest of the evening. Cindy, Nancy and Thea all work SE10, and Cindy will have checked the sunset before she replies to Maude.

Michelle takes the seat facing the room and makes everybody else relax, which is the entire job here. Thea is unhurried, green eyed and opinionated about food, so the conversation has somewhere to go from the first minute. Nancy is thirty and completely finished with pretending to be in a hurry. Danielle reads a room in about nine seconds and never says so. Their pages are on the desk.

Whether she needs to know anything about the two of you beforehand: only what you choose to tell her, though how long you have been together tends to come up over the first drink anyway. Whether the booking can be moved: yes, with three hours of notice or more, at no cost. Whether she minds being outnumbered: no, and if she did she would not be on this page. Whether the format costs anything different: it does not, and the whole ladder is on rates.

Either of you, with the other confirming. Give the date, the hour, the restaurant or the hotel, the length and a first name for each of you. Maude answers inside fifteen minutes with a name and the figure. That figure is handed to the companion in person when she arrives, at exactly the number in your confirmation. The steps are on booking.