Liana among the ferns above Crossrail Place

Grace is not a word the desk uses lightly, but Liana earns it the moment she crosses a lobby. She is slim and 167 cm, with long chestnut brown hair worn straight and brown eyes that seem to read the evening before it has begun. She keeps to a classic palette, ivory, navy, a dove grey that suits her colouring, with a thin gold chain and nothing louder. Pilates gives her an upright, unhurried way of moving that people register without quite knowing why.

Liana is intuitive. Within a few minutes she can tell whether a guest needs to unpack the day or bury it, and she adjusts without being asked. She is gentle in manner and fluent in English. Most evenings she is halfway through a French novel in translation, read slowly on purpose. At home there is a balcony crowded with herbs and a lemon tree that has survived three London winters under her care.

Her Canary Wharf evening begins above the station, in the Crossrail Place Roof Garden, where a timber lattice roof shelters ferns and plants from the lands the old West India Docks once traded with. Dusk is her hour there, once the desks upstairs have emptied and the towers glow through the gaps overhead. Dinner is a short stroll away, ideally French, ideally unhurried, at a table where the noise stays low.

Liana lives in Marylebone, around fifteen minutes away on the Elizabeth line, and prefers quiet weeknights with a day's notice. The Canary Wharf page has the hotels around the squares; rates shows every length, and booking will confirm her by message.