Samanta, companion in Hatton Cross

Nothing about Samanta is hurried, which is a useful quality at a station where everyone else is watching a departure board. Slim, 174 cm, her dark brown hair long, her eyes brown, and a face that gives very little away until she decides to. Late twenties. Mayfair is home, and she is clear eyed about the distance: this is the far end of the Piccadilly line and she counts the journey as part of the booking rather than an inconvenience.

Her company is quiet and confident. She does not chase approval and she does not pretend to be impressed by things. Her English is unshowy, and the dry humour arrives late in the evening, once she has taken your measure. Guests who spend their working lives performing find her a relief, because she asks for nothing and notices everything.

Hatton Cross is a junction, not a destination, and she says so plainly. Terminal 4 lies a single stop west and the middle of the airport two, while anything resembling a night out is in the other direction: three stops up the line to Hounslow, where the plain hotel on Lampton Road sits two minutes from the station and the high street is still busy at ten. She is happy either way, and she will tell you which makes sense for your morning.

The southern gateway is covered on Hatton Cross. Send the desk your hotel, your hour and your flight time if there is one, and she will fit the journey around it. Booking explains how she gets there and back.

She makes the geography work for you rather than against you. If your flight is early, stay at the perimeter and let the evening be simple. If you have a free night and no alarm, she will suggest going up the line into town, eating properly, and coming back on a train that takes eight minutes.

Either version runs at her pace, which is slow in the best sense. She is not a woman who fills a room with chatter. She sits, she listens, she asks one question that turns out to be the right one. By the time the evening reaches its quiet part she knows more about your week than most of your colleagues do, and she has told you almost nothing about hers.