A companion for a work dinner or a function room

What she does in the room

She talks to people. That sounds slight and it is the entire skill. She will hold a conversation with the person on her left for twenty minutes, remember what they said, and hand it back to you later. She will notice when you are stuck with somebody and rescue you without it being visible. She will not drink much, will not dominate the table and will not be the story of the evening.

If you would rather she said very little, several of the women here are extremely good at composed and quiet, and Iris will point you at them instead. Say which you want in your first message and the suggestion changes accordingly.

What gets agreed beforehand

More than for any other booking on this site. How you met, if anybody asks. What you do, in one sentence she can repeat without hesitating. Whether she uses her own name. Whether there are people in the room who should not be given a surname. Whether it is a seated dinner, a standing reception or both, and roughly who else is going to be there.

None of that is elaborate. It takes one exchange of messages and it is the difference between an evening that runs smoothly and a long half hour of improvisation over a starter.

Dress, and the rooms out here

Tell her the dress code in plain words and she will land slightly under it rather than slightly over, which is always the right side to be on. A function room at a Cranford hotel on a trade night is not black tie and dressing as though it were makes a guest conspicuous, which is the one thing this booking is designed to avoid.

The rooms themselves are mostly large, carpeted and warm, with a bar at one end and a car park at the other. She has been in them. She will know where the quiet corner is by the time you have finished your first drink.

Timing a conference evening

Receptions out here start early, around six or half past, and the Hounslow West and Bath Road approaches are at their worst at exactly that hour. Build in the traffic or start after it. A companion arriving flustered at ten past is not the entrance either of you wanted.

Dinners tend to end earlier than city ones, often by half past ten, which leaves the evening with somewhere to go afterwards if you want it to. Extending is the usual one rung step on the ladder, agreed before the last booked minute and handed to her at the time.

If the function is at the hotel you are staying in, which out here it very often is, the end of the night is simpler than it would be in town. Nobody is looking for a taxi at eleven and nobody is doing arithmetic about a last train.

Leaving well

The going is the part people remember, and it is the part that is easiest to get wrong. She will not linger at a table after the group has started to break up, and she will not make a moment of leaving either. One goodbye, warmly, to whoever is still standing there, and then she is gone.

Where the evening has a second half that you would rather she was not part of, say so at the start and the booking simply ends at the hour you chose.

Discretion, stated plainly

Nothing about a booking is discussed with anybody, during or afterwards. Iris keeps the little she needs for as long as the booking lasts and no longer. No companion here has ever taken a photograph at a work dinner and none of them ever will.

If somebody at the table is a former guest, and in a borough this size that is not impossible, she will have noticed before you did and she will do absolutely nothing about it.

Five who are good in a room

Vanessa takes six o'clock starts and dinners on the Great West Road, which is the corridor most of these evenings happen on. Patricia is calm, tall and easy across a table of strangers. Stacy is the tallest on the list and carries a formal room without effort. Milena will choose the restaurant if nobody else will and choose it well. Samanta is composed late, which suits a dinner that runs long. All of them are on On The Route.