The road she comes out on
The women on this rota all live in town and ride or drive out to the airport for the evening. The usual route runs west along the Cromwell Road and the A4, onto the M4 at Chiswick, over the elevated section past Brentford and on to junction three or four. For Terminal 5 and the Colnbrook hotels it carries on round onto the M25 and off at junction fourteen by Poyle. On a kind evening the whole run is fifty minutes or so. On an unkind one, nobody can honestly tell you.
The weak points are well known to anybody who drives it. The elevated section closes from time to time for works and slows to a crawl after any breakdown; the approach to junction four backs up whenever the airport is busy; and the roundabout at junction fourteen, by Poyle, can hold a car for a quarter of an hour at the wrong moment. The Elizabeth line to Hayes and Harlington or West Drayton is the fallback, and the women use it, but it adds a short ride at the far end.
The margin inside every arrival time
The arrival time in your confirmation is not the time she would reach you on an empty road. It is the time she expects to reach you on this road, at this hour, on this day of the week, with a margin already folded into it. She leaves early rather than promise a time she cannot keep, and on most evenings she is on this side of the airport well before she is due.
Arriving early does not mean knocking early. She waits, walks the length of the forecourt or sits in the lobby with a coffee, and comes to the door at the time you were given. That margin is the reason a twenty minute delay on the motorway usually never reaches you at all: it is absorbed before you knew it existed, and you will only hear about it if you ask.
When the margin is not enough
Sometimes a lorry breaks down on the elevated section, or the whole west side of London locks solid, and no margin survives it. When that happens you hear about it before the confirmed time passes, not after. Hester writes to you with what has happened and a new arrival time she actually believes, because she would rather give you a later time she keeps than an optimistic one she has to revise twice.
You are never left watching a door and wondering. If the new time does not work for you, say so straight away; there is always something to be done about it, and it is far easier to rearrange at seven than at half past eight. Silence from the desk means she is on time, and that is worth knowing too.
Your booked length is kept whole
This is the part guests most want to know. The length you booked starts when she arrives, not at the time printed in your confirmation. If you booked three hours and the motorway cost her twenty minutes, you still have three hours from her knock, and the fee in your confirmation is exactly the fee she receives, in person, when she walks in. Nothing is trimmed from the end to make up for the road.
The only complication is an evening with a fixed end: an alarm at four for a dawn departure, or a meeting at eight the next morning. If a late start would push past it, tell Hester and choose from what she offers: the full length starting later, the evening moved to another night if you are staying on, or the booking called off with nothing owed. What she will not do is quietly hand you a shorter evening for the same figure.
When it is you who is late
The same road runs both ways. Flights land late, the passport queues at Terminals 2 and 3 have evenings of their own, and the taxi from the central area to the hotel row takes longer at seven than at ten. Send your flight number with your first message and Hester will watch the landing rather than the clock; a start moved by an hour costs you nothing.
If you are held up after she has arrived, she gives it fifteen minutes, and then the desk agrees a new hour with you rather than quietly shortening your booking. The principle is the same whichever of you the traffic chose to delay: the length you agreed is the length you get, and the figure you agreed is the figure that changes hands.
Who plans for the road
Angelika comes out from Mayfair and plans an arrival rather than promising one; she would rather leave town forty minutes early and walk the front of the row than ring you from a slip road. Lucy comes out from Pimlico by tube, treats the journey as reading time and uses any spare minutes at the far end to form opinions about the lobby. Tiffany starts at eight, after the worst of the outbound traffic has cleared, and is the name Hester suggests to anybody who admits to nerves about the whole business.
All three are on the early twenties tag. The booking they most often arrive for is an evening at your airport hotel, three hours from £700 with the journey counted inside it. The most useful thing you can do to protect the timing is give the right address, which is what the postcode guide is for; the rest is Hester's job, and the full booking sequence has a page of its own.
Filed under: most of the names in this piece also sit under early twenties in the by tag.