Liana reads Colette in translation and Proust in instalments, one volume per winter, and she will admit that the second volume defeated her twice. It is the kind of honesty that makes her easy to trust. She is twenty-eight, graceful rather than showy, and lives in Marylebone, though her favourite bookshops are in SW7, clustered near Bute Street, where South Kensington keeps its French cafés and its paperbacks.
At 167 cm she is slim, with the long posture of someone who does Pilates four mornings a week. Her hair is chestnut and completely straight, falling well past her shoulders; her eyes are dark and quick to soften. She dresses in cream, camel and navy, and seems made for a hotel lounge at five in the afternoon, when the lamps have just been switched on.
Guests describe her as intuitive. Liana senses whether an evening wants conversation or calm long before anyone says so, and adjusts without drawing attention to it. She gardens on a small London balcony with more ambition than space, speaks English softly and precisely, and has a habit of quoting a line, then apologising for it, then quoting another.
Dinner, when the choice is hers, is Bibendum at Michelin House on the Fulham Road, beneath the stained glass windows of the famous tyre man, where the cooking is serious and the room still feels like an occasion. Afterwards she likes a short walk to your hotel in South Kensington, leaving the rest of the evening to your pace. The rates page lists every duration before you write, and one message settles the rest.
