Angelika, companion in Bath Road

Bath Road at dusk is a line of lit hotel signs between two hedges, and Angelika walks it without hurrying. Athletic, 172 cm, her mornings spent on a running track rather than in a mirrored gym, and she carries the height easily. Long straight black hair worn down, brown eyes that settle on you instead of scanning the lobby for someone more interesting. At twenty four she dresses for the strip rather than for town: a dark column dress, a coat that survives the wind off the field, heels chosen for lobby marble and nothing more ambitious.

She is direct in a way that travellers find restful. No weather talk, no pretending your delay was interesting. She asks what you were flying for and then listens to the whole answer. She works in English and nothing else, and uses it plainly, with a dry streak that takes about ten minutes to surface. Friends call her steady. She reads flight trackers for pleasure and can name an aircraft by the sound of it going over, which she insists is not a skill worth having.

Her evenings here usually begin away from the hotels. The Three Magpies sits on the north side of the road with a garden facing the perimeter fence, and she likes an early drink there before dinner because it makes the night feel like somewhere rather than anywhere. She comes out from Mayfair, forty five minutes by car when the M4 behaves and closer to an hour when it does not, so she plans an arrival rather than promising one. Airport bookings run three hours as a minimum with travel counted inside, and that is exactly the length an evening on this road wants.

Hotel by hotel, the whole stretch is written up on the Bath Road page. Give Hester the hotel and the hour you land, and what she tells you about the night will be honest rather than encouraging.

• Bath Road, TW6 and UB3
• 172 cm, athletic
• Long straight black hair, brown eyes
• Twenty four, travels out from Mayfair
• Three hour minimum, her travel inside it

Give Hester the hotel, the terminal it serves and your landing or departure time, and she will work the night back from there. Airport bookings begin at three hours because her travel is counted within them.

Her figures are the desk figures, published in full on rates, and the whole arrangement runs in one thread from the first line to the confirmation. Every frame in the hall is reached from the hall.