Harmondsworth escorts in UB7, the village the runways went around

By road it is quick and slightly counter intuitive: five minutes to the western terminal, about eight to the central pair, and a straight run onto the motorway from the junction just north. Coming from town by car the last mile is the slow part, because the lanes were laid out for carts rather than for anything with a boot.

On foot the nearest platform is West Drayton, twenty five minutes away along roads that are fine in daylight and joyless after dark. The western terminal is about half an hour on foot and nobody does it. A short car covers either in five minutes and is what the women use.

Almost always a room on the Longford stretch of the old western road, or one of the buildings tucked behind the junction on the Sipson side. Full service where it matters, indifferent in the way that suits a late arrival, and a short car ride from the green either way.

None of those buildings has any arrangement with this desk and none is named anywhere on this site. A companion walks through reception with a bag like everyone else in the corridor, gives no name at the counter and goes up. Give the road and the room number in the same message and there is nothing left to arrange when she knocks.

Unhurried, and low on incident, which is the right trade for a Wednesday four hundred metres from a runway. If there is light left, a slow loop of the green and back is twenty minutes and does more for a long day than another drink downstairs. After that it is the room, the shoes off, and a conversation that goes wherever it goes.

Eat before nine out here or arrange it into the room, because the kitchens on this side close to suit guests who leave at six in the morning. Molly plans an evening around that rather than being surprised by it, and Patricia is next door in the same village pattern.

Engineering and freight crews on long postings, who know the corner better than most residents. Travellers on an enforced overnight who assumed something would be open. A steady number of people working the cargo estates just east, for whom this is simply where the quiet rooms are.

For all of them the evening is the room and the company in it, and the village is a pleasant fifteen minute surprise rather than the plan. The desk is honest about that before anybody books.

Molly works the old western road and likes the early starts out here, which suits a guest whose body clock is already three hours ahead. Patricia covers the same lanes and is the calmer of the two when a room number changes twice. Nancy and Rosa take any part of the airport at any hour and reach the green in under ten minutes.

The hotel strip along the northern edge is home ground for Bianka, Luna and Vanessa, all a few minutes away by road. That is a realistic seven for a UB7 evening, and booking sets out what happens between the first message and the knock.

South along the old road is Longford, the oldest village on this map and the quietest of the lot. East across the junction is Sipson, where most of the rooms behind the strip actually are. North is West Drayton, a proper town with a platform and somewhere to eat after nine. The northern hotel row runs along the edge between them, and the airport taken as one address explains how the four terminals sit inside it.