Lea, companion in Cranford

Cranford Park closes at dusk and Lea has learned the gate times, because an hour among the old stable blocks and the church before dinner changes the shape of a whole evening. She is petite, 161 cm, with long wavy auburn hair worn loose and hazel eyes that pick up green in low light. Twenty three, she dresses soft: a wrap dress, a cardigan she is forever mislaying, a thin gold chain. Nobody has ever called her intimidating and she stopped minding about that some time ago.

She is sweet natured and quick to laugh, and she can make a plain hotel room feel like a place you picked rather than a place you washed up in. She asks about the small things, what you ate on the flight, whether the seat was any good, and she remembers the answers. English is her language, spoken with a warmth that tends to pull the barman into the conversation as well. She collects old maps of places she has never been and admits this makes very little sense.

Cranford sits at the Hounslow end of the Bath Road, which means Piccadilly line arrivals rather than Elizabeth line ones. Hounslow West is twenty two minutes on foot or five in a car, and the hotels she visits are back west along the road at Hayes. Lea comes out from Belgravia and usually takes the tube the whole way, because the Piccadilly line runs to Hounslow West late and she would rather read than sit in the queue for junction three. Three hours is the minimum on airport nights with travel inside it, which is enough for the park, dinner and a long conversation.

Gate times, station walks and the hotels back west along the road are on the Cranford page. Tell Hester which hotel you are in and she will say what Lea can reach from it before dark.

• Cranford, TW5
• 161 cm, petite
• Long wavy auburn hair, hazel eyes
• Twenty three, travels out from Belgravia
• Hounslow West, twenty two minutes on foot

If you want the park in the evening, tell Hester early: the gates close at dusk and that moves by two hours between summer and winter. Otherwise a hotel name and a start time is all she needs.

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.