Heathrow Terminal 5 escorts, TW6: watched by every camera, noticed by no one

Past the security search, Terminal 5 belongs to people holding boarding passes, and nobody else goes through. An evening here therefore never begins at a gate, a lounge or an airside bar. It begins landside, which in practice means your hotel, whether that is the one at TW6 2GD beside the terminal or one of those out along the Bath Road and at Colnbrook in SL3.

Octavia asks for the name the room is held under and its number, and nothing else about your journey. Your companion comes to the door as any invited guest would, already dressed for the plans you described. What the hotel sees is a traveller meeting a well dressed friend. She never mentions the house, and nobody needs to.

An airport hotel corridor keeps no single night. Behind the door to your left someone may have been asleep since seven, after a long flight in from the east; behind the one to your right, someone is setting an alarm for four. So voices stay low in the corridor, the door closes without a bang, and nobody stands outside it saying goodbye.

The villages around this end of Heathrow, Harmondsworth, Longford and Colnbrook among them, are owed the same courtesy, and Heathrow itself extends it: the runways take turns through the day so the streets beneath the approaches get their hours of rest. At Terminal 5, discretion is mostly consideration. An evening stays private here because it is courteous, and she carries it that way from the moment the taxi door opens.