Ten hours, from the evening through to breakfast

What ten hours actually looks like

Usually it starts at eight or nine and ends somewhere around seven the next morning. Dinner is often inside it, either out or ordered up, and so is the long slack hour afterwards where an evening either relaxes or does not. Most of the difference between a good overnight and a short booking happens in that hour.

The morning end is quieter than people expect. Coffee, the news on in the background, a conversation that picks up where it left off. She leaves when the booking says she leaves, dressed and gone without a production being made of it, and if there is an alarm set for five she will be ahead of it.

Before an early departure

The single most common reason for an overnight in these postcodes is a flight the following morning. From a room at Hatton Cross the Terminal 4 walkway is three minutes from the station, and from the Bath Road the central terminals are a short and predictable run even at six in the morning.

An overnight before a dawn departure is also simply better arithmetic than a three hour evening that ends at one and leaves you awake and alone until the alarm. The ten hours cover the whole of it, sleep included, at a figure that does not climb because of the hour on the clock.

Away from the airport

Not every overnight has an aircraft in it. Plenty happen in Hounslow West, out at Heston, in a flat by the river or in a house in one of the residential roads that make up most of this borough. Those tend to start later, run slower and involve no plan at all beyond dinner, which is a perfectly good way to spend ten hours.

A private address works exactly as a hotel does. Iris checks the street and the door number once, before anything is agreed, and that is the whole of the arrangement.

The one practical difference is the morning. A hotel has a lobby and a lift and nobody looks twice at anybody at seven. A residential road at that hour is quieter and more observant, so if you would rather she left at six than at eight, say so when the booking is made and the ten hours are counted backwards from there.

What the figure covers and what it does not

£1,800 covers ten hours of her time and her company. Her journey out to you is already inside it, and so is Iris's work from your first message through to the note saying she has set off. Nothing is added later and nothing on this site is arranged through the site.

Dinner, wine, a taxi you share and anything else you buy during the evening are yours to settle at the moment you buy them, exactly as they would be with anybody else you had taken out. The fee itself goes to the companion in person, quietly, in the first few minutes after she arrives.

Notice, and holding a date

A day is comfortable and two is better, particularly at a weekend and particularly for one of the women who is currently resting. Several of the roster take overnights on dates months ahead and a few guests book that way deliberately, around a trip that is already in the diary.

Same evening happens, but it is a narrower choice. If you want a particular name for a particular night, write to booking early rather than hoping. Moving or cancelling is free with three hours of notice, and the terms for anything shorter are set out in full on the rates page.

Five who take whole nights

Violetta prefers long evenings and overnights to anything shorter and is plain about it. Milena is at her best across a whole night on the Cranford side of the Bath Road. Lucy meets long haul arrivals at Terminal 5 and will tell you honestly that ten hours makes more sense than three after nine hours in the air. Margo starts at ten at night and is dressed and gone before a five o'clock alarm. Danielle says overnights suit her better than short bookings out in TW8. Every name is on On The Route.