Two companions who already know each other, for one evening

Two women who share a road and have spent evenings in the same hotels tend to work. Laura and Rosa both take Sipson and are a natural pair for the junction four hotels. Bianka and Molly both take Colnbrook and have the same unhurried idea of how a village evening should go.

Karolina and Patricia both work the Harmondsworth lanes and are the pair for a guest who wants a quieter, more measured table. Ask Hester for the current list rather than assuming any two names will pair; she will say plainly which combinations she can put together on a given night.

Two adults booking company for an evening, and a third and fourth person at the table. A drink, dinner, conversation that moves faster than it does with one companion because two people who know each other bring their own momentum to it. Nothing further is offered or implied, and the presence of two companions does not change that in any way.

It is a sociable booking rather than a private one, and most of the guests who ask for it want exactly that: an evening with more life in it than a hotel dining room usually manages.

A hotel with somewhere to sit downstairs. Four people in a room is a different evening from four people in a bar, and the strip and the junction four hotels have the better public spaces on this side of the airport. The desk will point you at two or three.

A table for four also needs a kitchen that can take one after eight, which narrows the field out here more than it would in town. Say in your first message whether you want the table booked for you, and say roughly when you land, because the two things together decide which hotel the desk suggests. The airport areas pages list what each road can actually seat.

The other common shape. Two colleagues, or two friends travelling together, booking one companion each for the same evening. It is arranged identically: each woman is booked for the length you want and each is paid her own fee by hand when she arrives.

Say which of you is which in the first message, because the desk would rather match the pair to the two of you than hand you a coin toss.

Two companions means two fees at the same published rung. Three hours is £700 each, four hours with dinner is £900 each, and a full night is £1,800 each. There is no duo surcharge and no discount either; the ladder is the ladder and there is nothing hidden under it.

Each fee is handed to the companion it belongs to, in person, in the first minute of the evening. Everybody else on the roster is in the hall, and the curvaceous and toned tags are a quick way to shorten the list before you ask.

More than a single booking needs, because two diaries have to agree. Four or five days is comfortable and a week is better. Send Hester the hotel, the date and whether it is one guest or two, and she will tell you which pairs she can put together. The booking page has the sequence from there.