The quiet version: an E14 evening with nothing staged in it

It means the plan can be small and nobody pretends otherwise. No reserved table if you do not want one. No itinerary recited at the door. You can spend the first half hour saying almost nothing and it will not be treated as a problem to be solved. Several of the women below are specifically good at this, which is a real skill and a rarer one than the trade admits. Across E14 it is the format that gets rebooked most often.

Two hours at £500 holds one place and one long sit: a flat, a suite, the corner of a hotel bar. Three hours at £700 adds movement, which here almost always means a walk to the water and supper after it. Four hours at £900 is the same evening with a proper table in the middle. The rungs are on rates and not one of them changes because of what the format is called.

It runs roughly like this: out along the north dock, past the water with the lights sitting on it, across to Canada Square and back up into whichever tower you are staying in. Twenty five minutes at a slow pace, fifteen if the wind has come off the river and settled the question for you. Over at London Bridge, eight Jubilee minutes away, the equivalent is the stretch from the station down to the riverside and back, which is worth the trip if you would rather have stone than glass.

Most of these begin at half past seven, in a hotel bar or at your door. The first half hour is deliberately small: a drink, a question or two, and a good deal of room to say very little. At eight comes the walk, and at twenty five minutes it is exactly as long as it needs to be.

Supper follows at about half past eight, somewhere with no reservation to honour and nobody hovering. On the Isle of Dogs, a few minutes south of the towers, the kitchens are smaller and the tables further apart. By ten you are back where you started, with half an hour left for the part of the conversation that only turns up at the end. At half past ten she goes, and the evening closes on time although neither of you once checked the hour.

Molly photographs buildings at night and is entirely content with no agenda at all. Lucy would rather be told the plan is quiet than have it dressed up as something grander. Tina rows on the tideway at six in the morning and is usually the only person in the room watching the water. Michelle makes a nervous first hour stop being one. Rosa has the best laugh in a hundred seat room and will use it on you. Read three or four pages on the desk before you write.

Say what you would rather not do. That is more useful to Maude than a list of what you want. No restaurant, no crowd, no late finish, no plan at all: any one of those takes twenty eight names down to three in a single message. Give a date, an hour and an address alongside it and the evening comes back confirmed inside a quarter of an hour. The steps are on booking.