Laura, ninety metres above the Thames

Laura has the energy of a person who would rather be outdoors, and the manners of a person who knows how to come inside. Athletic at 169 cm, she wears her long light brown hair loose, lightened by summers away, and people mention her green eyes before anything else. By day she keeps it easy: linen, a fitted knit, loafers. For evening she switches to a wrap dress in a bright print and looks as if she has come from a garden party, even in November.

Adventurous, warm and full of plans, Laura is the cure for eight hours under meeting-room strip lights. Her English is fluent and lively. She rides whenever she can find a horse, skis every winter she can manage and speaks about small Italian hill towns with the tenderness of someone who means to live in one eventually. She makes decisions quickly and rarely regrets them.

Her Royal Docks evening starts at the dockside station of the IFS Cloud Cable Car on Royal Victoria Dock. The cabin lifts you across the Thames to the Greenwich Peninsula in about ten minutes, and at sunset the whole of Docklands turns gold beneath your feet. She points out ExCeL, the Thames Barrier, the towers of Canary Wharf. On the far bank a riverside drink waits, then the return crossing in the dark, the city lit below.

She lives in Paddington, directly on the Elizabeth line to Custom House, and same day requests from noon are usually fine. The docks lie in Zone 3, so you hear the round-trip taxi fare before you commit. Hotels are listed under Royal Docks and ExCeL, durations under rates, and booking handles the rest.