Okay, so I’m not fond of heights. I don’t climb ladders; if I do, I certainly don’t look down. Glass-bottom viewing platforms, cliff edges, even standing on a chair to change a lightbulb—they all make my stomach wobble. But there is one exception to this general rule: I like flying high. Somehow cocooned in something with propellers, my brain files it under “adventure” instead of “impending doom”. And with my line of work, that taste for altitude occasionally comes as part of the job description.
So, to find myself buckled into a helicopter, headset on, blades roaring overhead, was, to put it mildly, out of my comfort zone and then some. The floor felt far too flimsy, the doors far too close to the edge of the sky. Every instinct in me screamed to get back on solid ground. However, as with most things in life, I am prepared to make an exception. Especially when the situation involves a sophisticated, middle‑aged gentleman with impeccable manners, and enough money to buy not only a fleet of helicopters but also an airfield to store them on.
Vincent and “His View”
This particular gentleman is called Vincent. Urbane, slightly silver at the temples, always perfectly put together. He has the confidence of a man very used to having doors—literal and metaphorical—opened for him. On this occasion, he had decided he wanted to show me what he called “his view”. Not the London of guidebooks and tour buses, but the city as he knows it. Mapped in deals and memories, dinners and discreet rendezvous, each building another point on his personal constellation.
As the helicopter lifted off with a surge and a shudder, my entire body reacted before my mind could negotiate. I snapped my fingers around Vincent’s forearm and gripped him for dear life. If I’d had claws, I would have used them. The poor man ended up with neat, half‑moon indents pressed into his skin from my fingernails He looked amused rather than offended, that soft, lazy grin of his playing at the corners of his mouth.
He leaned in close and brushed his lips lightly against my cheek. “Relax,” he murmured, his voice low and utterly untroubled, as if we weren’t dangling above the city attached to a spinning blade. I closed my eyes for a moment and dragged several deep, deliberate lungfuls of oxygen into my chest. In… two… three… out… two… three. With each breath, the raw panic ebbed slightly, and I tried to do as I was told.
What Unfurls Below
We’d chosen—or rather, Vincent had chosen—a night flight. It was a decision that proved perfect. Once we climbed to our cruising height, the city unfurled beneath us like a black velvet cloth scattered with jewels. It was ablaze with light: headlights threading through the streets, and neon signs shouting in colour from theatre fronts and shop facades.
From up there, landmarks that sometimes feel anonymous at ground level suddenly announced themselves. Tower Bridge was picked out cleanly in hundreds of tiny bulbs, strung like delicate necklaces along the dark curve of the Thames. The water below us moved in slow, inky swirls.
Once my initial terror loosened its hold, my curiosity took over. I found myself forgetting to be afraid. I was sitting right up in my seat, pressing as close as I dared to the window, peering down at the city spread out beneath. Flying high is something else entirely. You recognise streets you’ve walked a hundred times and yet they look oddly unfamiliar. They are flattened and rearranged, their usual noise and chaos reduced to tiny, silent movements.
Vincent watched me with clear satisfaction, delighted that his escort date was not only calming down but clearly enchanted. He began pointing out some of the places that meant something to him. The restaurants where he’d sealed deals. Hotels where he’d stayed on nights he didn’t feel like going home, private members’ clubs hidden behind anonymous facades. Every so often, he’d lean over my shoulder, gesture through the glass, and murmur a memory in my ear. It felt strangely intimate, as if he were unfolding a private atlas only a few people had ever been allowed to see.
A City of Lights and Landmarks
We coursed over from East to West, tracing the curves of the river. The financial district shimmered with its steel and glass towers. Canary Wharf shines like a cluster of oversized circuit boards from miles away. The Docks sparkled in the city lights, their dark water broken by the occasional moving vessel.
The West End, though, was the most brazenly alive. From above, it blazed: streets stitched together in neon and LED, theatre marquees shouting their titles into the night. Queues of theatregoers snaking along pavements like coloured threads. You could see little pockets of movement wherever a curtain had just gone down. Figures spilling out into the chill, laughter forming visible puffs of breath, taxis crawling in lines to collect them.
Below us, a miniature Buckingham Palace sat in its orderly grounds. Its famous façade reduced to a toy‑like rectangle of light. Marble Arch shrank to an elegant white loop, an ornament at the edge of a dark, shadowy patch that was Hyde Park.
As we banked and circled, the city shifted under us. St Paul’s dome here, the shard of The Shard there, the London Eye like a pale wheel laid on its side. I had the odd sensation of looking down at a board game I was somehow both on and above. I could only think to myself, over and over, what a lucky London escort I was. This wasn’t just a job or a date; this was the sort of experience that lodges in the back of your mind and glows quietly for years. I am not only here to live and work, I thought, but also to see it this way.
Champagne Up Above
On the final leg of our journey, Vincent reached for the chilled bottle that had been waiting patiently at his side. With practised ease, he worked the cork free—not with an undignified pop, but with a discreet sigh—and poured us both a glass. The bubbles caught the cabin light as they rose, tiny comets in tall flutes. We toasted above the rooftops, our glasses clinking softly against the backdrop of rotor noise and distant city hum.
Our route curved at last towards Kensington, where the rooftops became grander, terraces and townhouses vying subtly with one another for elegance. Instead of heading towards an anonymous helipad, we descended onto the flat roof of Vincent’s own home, as casually as if we were pulling into a private driveway. The blades slowed, the thunder dimmed, and the lights of the cockpit surrendered to the more subdued glow of the house beneath us.
When the doors opened and we stepped out into the cool night air, a member of Vincent’s household staff was already waiting, perfectly timed. His butler—immaculate in a dark suit—greeted us by name as if we’d merely returned from a short walk rather than dropped out of the sky. He took my coat with smooth efficiency and informed us, in his calm, well‑modulated voice, that dinner would be served in half an hour.
A Perfect Ending
I glanced at Vincent, still feeling the faint buzz of the flight in my body, as if the ground were not entirely solid yet. He met my look, one eyebrow lifting in quiet amusement. “That sounds splendid,” he said, his tone warm and assured, and slipped my arm through his.
He whisked me off to his private drawing room, a space that seemed to echo his personality—understated yet undeniably opulent. Soft lamplight, shelves of books that had clearly been read, art that suggested long, thoughtful acquisitions rather than impulsive purchases, low music murmuring from unseen speakers. We sank into a pair of deep, comfortable armchairs by the window, glasses refreshed, and began to recap everything we had seen.
We compared impressions like postcards: the way Tower Bridge looked like lace against the dark. The strange tranquillity of Hyde Park under the city’s halo. He told me stories tied to specific rooftops and windows; I told him how oddly small and manageable everything had seemed from above, as if all its drama and chaos could be folded neatly into a single evening.
Spoilt? Me? No… Just a very fortunate woman who, for one night at least, was able to swap her fear of heights for a pair of champagne‑filled wings.
