Patricia, companion in Longford

Auburn brown, worn long, and a way of standing in a doorway that makes a plain corridor look better. Patricia is 172 cm and slim, brown eyed, and she moves without any wasted motion. Late twenties. Belgravia is where she lives and Longford is about as far from it in character as west London allows: a lane, a church, two pubs and the constant low noise of the motorway behind the hedges. She enjoys the contrast more than she expected to.

Her manner is level and quietly attentive. She neither fills silences nor performs. Her English is careful and she listens like somebody who intends to remember the answer. Guests booking her out here are usually flying at dawn, which means the evening has a hard edge on it, which she is unusually good at treating as a shape rather than a restriction.

The King William IV on the Bath Road is her local fixture in the village, an unpretentious pub that has been serving airport workers and travellers for longer than any hotel out here has existed. Ten minutes on foot from most of the Longford hotels and five by car from Terminal 5. She will meet you there for an hour before dinner if the timing works, and she is equally happy to skip it and start at the hotel instead.

This end of the airport is described on Longford. Tell the desk your hotel, your departure time and when you want her, and she will work the evening backwards from your alarm. Rates has the durations.

A dawn departure changes an evening and she treats that as a design problem rather than a nuisance. Everything moves earlier: dinner at seven, the good hours in the middle, and a clear end so you get a real night rather than four broken hours. She will say so at the start, which saves the awkward conversation later.

What stays is the unhurried part. She is not interested in an evening that feels like a schedule, only in one that finishes at a sensible point. The village helps. There is nothing to be tempted out to, the road quietens after eleven, and the first departures do not start rumbling over until well after you have gone to sleep. When the evening ends she goes without any fuss, which at that hour is its own kind of courtesy.