A companion at your hotel, wherever the shuttle drops you

Fifty minutes out from town on a kind evening, more when the motorway has an opinion, and the same again on the way home. An hour at a perimeter hotel would put her in a car for twice as long as she spent with you, which serves neither side. So three hours is the floor at £700, four hours with dinner is £900, and a full night is £1,800.

Nothing is added for a late hour, a Sunday or a suite on a high floor. There is no service charge anywhere and no figure that is not on the ladder.

Half the addresses out here serve a terminal nobody would guess from the name. The strip between Harlington Corner and the Longford turn is ten minutes from Terminals 2 and 3 and rather longer to Terminal 5. The hotels on the perimeter vary by a surprising margin depending which side of the field they sit on, and the ones at junction four are further from a gate and quieter for it.

Give Hester the hotel rather than the terminal and let her do the arithmetic. If you have not booked a room yet, tell her which terminal you fly from and she will say which of the airport areas suits your timings.

Most guests send the room number and she takes the lift. Others would rather begin downstairs, in a bar or a covered courtyard or an atrium with somewhere to sit that is neither the room nor the terminal, and that works just as well; the booking starts when she sits down beside you.

She never meets anybody airside, in an arrivals hall or at a gate. It is the discreet way round and it has never once caused a problem at any hotel on this side of London.

Before she sets off you send two things into the same chat: the name your reservation is under, and the room number. That is the entire check, and it exists so that both sides know the booking is genuine. Nobody from this desk will ever ask you for a bank detail or a document, and a message claiming otherwise did not come from here.

Her fee passes to her by hand once she is inside, in pounds, the figure from your confirmation and nothing more. It happens in the first minute and is then finished with.

Lucy has met every lobby on the perimeter and formed a view about all of them, which makes her the easiest name to place when you do not yet know what your hotel is like. Michelle knows every entrance on the strip and which kitchen is still serving at eleven. Angelika walks the same road without hurrying and is good with a guest who has been travelling since dawn.

Rosa comes off the motorway and into a lobby inside a minute and is one of the few names the desk can often find at short notice. Tina takes the central terminal rooms and arrives on the dot. All twenty eight are in the hall, and if build narrows things faster than geography, the slim and slender tag is a quick way to shorten the list.

Write as soon as the board changes rather than waiting to be sure. The roads are quiet after eight, so an hour either way is usually absorbed without difficulty and moving a start time costs nothing. If you are running late she waits a quarter of an hour, then the desk sets a new hour rather than quietly trimming your booking. Every step is on the booking page.