Auburn and red: the shortest column in the ledger

Petite, hazel eyed, auburn worn wavy, and entirely capable of out walking a taller man. Lea swims, draws badly and will go to live anything at all rather than stay in. A walk and supper together want three hours at £700, while £500 across two is right when the evening begins and ends in one place. She works Stratford as well as E14, so a curtain time at the Olympic Park end is easy for her. Tell Maude the curtain and the start is built around it.

Curvy, brown eyed, dark auburn red, and the reason this column gets asked for by name. Luna keeps late hours, follows live music into warehouse rooms and has a diary that already knows what is on this week. Three hours at £700 from about nine is the usual, and the overnight at £1,800 when the room does not close until it is nearly light. She covers Wapping and E14, which is the right pair of postcodes for a night that keeps moving.

Slim, auburn brown, brown eyed, with four hundred years of river history in her head and a very dry way of handing it over. Patricia collects second hand books and single malts and will take you along a dark stretch of wall that most people walk past. The pub, the walk and a table with nobody watching a clock come to £700 across three hours; a long drink and the river wall alone fit inside £500. Maude confirms exactly where to meet, because a dark street is no place for guesswork.

Luna and Patricia both work Wapping, and the difference between them there is the hour. Patricia takes evenings from seven, starts in the pub on the High Street and would not sit down to dinner before half past nine. Luna rarely begins before nine at night and heads for the warehouse rooms off Wapping Lane. Lea is the one to the north, around the Olympic Park, and the one to ask for an earlier start in summer. She is also the only petite name of the three and the only one with hazel eyes; Luna is the curvy one, Patricia the slim one, and both of them have brown eyes.

If the evening has a start time printed on a ticket, Lea. If it has no end time at all, Luna. If it has a river in it and no particular hurry, Patricia. None of the three is easy at an hour's notice on a Friday; two days is the difference between a choice and whoever is left.

Across the rest of the ledger, Lea is in petite and early twenties, Luna in curvaceous and the same age band, and Patricia in statuesque, slim and slender and late twenties. All twenty eight are on the desk.