Canary Wharf after 19:00, E14: an evening measured in minutes

Canary Wharf station sits under the estate and puts the Jubilee line, the Elizabeth line and the DLR on one set of escalators; ticket hall to Cabot Square is two minutes on foot. Heron Quays, DLR only, is four minutes from the south side of the dock. West India Quay, also DLR, is six minutes and lands you among the old sugar warehouses.

From a confirmed booking, plan on forty five minutes to an hour before she knocks. Before 22:00 the Elizabeth line does the work, thirteen minutes from Bond Street and six from Liverpool Street. After the last trains it becomes a road run through the Limehouse Link, roughly twenty minutes from the City and longer in rain. Maude quotes the honest figure rather than the flattering one, and tells you the moment it slips.

One hotel stands at Westferry Circus, E14 8RS, facing the river rather than the dock, and it is the quietest arrival of the five. Another, E14 4ED, sits on West India Quay behind the warehouse arcade, six minutes from the station. The newest of them is on the estate itself, and its ground floor fills fast between six and eight.

South of the water, E14 9SH and E14 9TP face each other across Marsh Wall, both about seven minutes from Canada Square by the South Quay footbridge. They are listed for one reason, that guests sleep in them: none has any arrangement with this desk, and nobody there is told anything. Private flats and serviced apartments on the estate are booked on identical terms.

Two hours at £500 is the commonest length on this estate, because it holds a table and a walk without anyone watching a clock. One hour at £250 is the late option, ordered from a room above the thirtieth floor by somebody with an 07:00 call. Client entertaining takes the dinner date, four hours at £900, where the point is that nothing stops when the plates are cleared.

Who writes: traders at the end of a session they would rather not describe, lawyers parked here for a fortnight of completion meetings, visiting directors on the wrong side of a time zone, and residents in the towers along the water who would sooner host than go out. The shared requirement is punctuality and a woman who can hold a business casual table without turning it into an occasion.

Angelika takes the early sitting on Canada Square and the dock loop afterwards. Jasmin and Michelle treat the estate as home ground and know which bars empty by nine. Samanta comes east for the high floors and the view north over the Lea. Molly and Sonya cover the postcode more widely, from Limehouse Basin down to Island Gardens.

Six to eight names show on this page at a time, chosen for who is based here or one stop away rather than for who needs the work. If none of them fits, describe the evening instead, a client dinner, a late supper upstairs, a quiet hour, and Maude puts two or three forward. The whole board of twenty eight sits on the desk, and every length and figure on rates.

Limehouse is one DLR stop west, four minutes on the train. Across the footbridge the towers of South Quay and the Isle of Dogs begin immediately. Custom House and the ExCeL halls are one Elizabeth line stop east, three minutes. Greenwich is six DLR minutes south under the river, and Stratford a straight nine minute Jubilee run north. The whole postcode is indexed on the E14 page.

Her fare across Zones 1 and 2 already sits inside the figure, which covers everything on that list except the Royal Docks and City Airport out in Zone 3. There the fare both ways is worked out and written into the confirmation as a single number before you agree to anything. The order of events from first message to knock is on booking.