Léa, 28, Paris

• 2languages

Paris after dark, told by someone who never left the 10th.

Léa, 28, lives six flights up, no lift, in a flat near the Canal Saint-Martin that she refuses to give up. By day she reads manuscripts for a publisher, usually on the Métro, and she knows which bookshops in the 10th stay open latest. If you've done Paris on a long weekend off the Eurostar, she'll tell you what you missed: wet pavements after rain, café terraces in September that nobody wants to leave, the film you should have seen instead of the queue at the Louvre. She answers in English with a French accent she makes no effort to hide, and slips into French if you ask. First question, every time: how was your day? She listens to the whole answer, which is usually where the call properly begins. What she can't stand is someone in a hurry to get to the point.

Ring me when the streetlights come on. I'll tell you the rest.

Léa's photos and profile are computer-generated illustrations, not portraits of the woman on the phone. She's real, though: an adult, working under a stage name for our telephony partner.