Nancy, companion in Heathrow

Golden blonde, long, with blue eyes and a composure that comes from having done this at every hour the airport operates. Nancy stands 170 cm, curvy, dressed for a lobby at midnight rather than for a photograph. Early thirties. Covent Garden is home, and she is straightforward about the journey: fifty minutes by road when it flows, ninety when it does not, and she leaves accordingly rather than leaving hopefully.

Experience shows in small ways. She does not ask a tired man twenty questions at the door. She notices the room temperature, the curtain that does not close, the fact that you have not eaten since a tray somewhere over the Atlantic. Her English is warm and steady and she is very hard to surprise. Guests who travel constantly tend to book her because nothing about the evening needs explaining twice.

The hotel at the Longford end is a good example of the local confusion she enjoys clearing up: it stands on the Bath Road at the Longford end rather than at the terminal, and it runs a shuttle that takes about ten minutes. She will tell you which hotels are genuinely attached to a terminal and which are simply named after one, and which ones put the quiet rooms on the side away from the road.

Everything the airport asks of a visitor is covered on Heathrow. Send the desk your terminal, your hotel and the hour, or a flight number if you are still in the air. Rates lists the durations, and three hours is the shortest evening here.

She has a settled routine for an airport evening and it exists because it works. She confirms the hotel, not the terminal, because the two are often further apart than the name suggests. She arrives after you have showered rather than while you are queuing for a room. She brings the evening with her: the conversation starts in the lift, not after an awkward twenty minutes.

The rest is unhurried. Dinner if the kitchen is open, something brought up if it is not, and a long stretch of talk about wherever you have flown in from. She is at her best with people who have been travelling for weeks and have stopped being able to tell one hotel from another, because she makes this one memorable without making it complicated.