An hour of quiet with Margo

Margo plays the piano late at night with the lid down, so that the neighbours hear only a rumour of it. There is something of that in her whole manner: refined, a little mysterious, never showing everything at once. Slender through the shoulders and 166 cm tall, Margo keeps her dark brown hair long and lacquer sleek; the eyes, a deep and unreadable brown, reward patience. Her style borrows from the old cocktail lounges, bias-cut satin, a fitted jacket from another decade, pearls worn long enough to loop twice.

Her calm is contagious. Margo is in her early thirties and puts people at ease almost at once, speaking English with quiet precision and listening with complete attention. Contemporary art fascinates her, particularly the work nobody can quite explain, and she keeps a small courtyard garden that is, she says, the only place she ever loses track of time. Her humour is dry and rare, which makes it all the more delightful when it surfaces. For a Knightsbridge evening she chooses the Library Bar at The Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner, with its leather armchairs, lamplit shelves and old cognacs, and she likes a corner seat, a single drink that lasts and a conversation that moves slowly from art to music to the things people rarely say aloud. When the bar empties she will suggest the short walk along the edge of Belgravia, arm in arm, rather than a cab.

Margo lives in Knightsbridge and is resting for a few days. Rosie is already noting requests for her return, and the rates page lists every duration.