Cindy, companion in Hounslow Central

Hounslow is not a town people dress up for, which is precisely why Cindy does. She is slim and 168 cm, the blonde hair long and wavy and left loose, the blue eyes doing most of the talking in the first minute. Mid twenties. Chelsea is where her things are, but she is on the Piccadilly line often enough to know that Hounslow Central to the airport is a quarter of an hour and that the platform announcements lie about the last one on a Sunday.

She is curious rather than chatty. Ask her something and she will answer properly, then turn the question round and wait. Her English is clear and unhurried and she has a talent for the silence in the middle of a conversation, the one most people rush to fill. Guests who work out here, on a project that has run three weeks longer than promised, tend to find her the easiest part of the week.

Her Hounslow evenings usually start at the big hotel on the Great West Road, a practical place ten minutes from the town centre and about fifteen from the terminals when the A4 is clear. She is honest about what that stretch is: dual carriageway, retail sheds, an aircraft every ninety seconds. Inside it is warm, the bar stays open, and she has never once needed a table booked in advance. If you would rather walk, Lampton Road and the high street are close enough for a short one before dinner.

The local detail lives on Hounslow Central. Send the desk the hotel name, the night, and the time you expect to be free of the office or the airport, and she will plan backwards from it. Booking covers what happens next.

Cindy treats a Hounslow night with the same care she would give a Mayfair one, which guests out here notice immediately. She arrives dressed for somewhere better than the car park she has just crossed, and she never mentions the journey. The first hour is a drink and a proper conversation, usually about what brought you to this end of the map and how much longer it is going to take.

After that she is happy to stay in. The hotels here are built for people who leave early, so the restaurant closes before you expect and the corridors go quiet by half ten. She plans around it: order at nine or not at all. What is left is a long, unhurried evening with the curtains shut on the Great West Road and nobody due anywhere until morning.