Bayswater escorts in W2, among the white terraces north of the park

Walk the side streets and a pattern repeats: porches on columns, black railings, a communal garden behind each square. Porchester Square, Leinster Square, Princes Square and Kensington Gardens Square each keep a locked garden for residents, and the houses around them are mostly flats, reached by a buzzer panel or a porter rather than a reception desk.

The street to remember is Leinster Gardens. Numbers 23 and 24 look like every other house on the terrace, yet their windows are painted on: the front is only a metre and a half deep, built to screen the open cutting where the Underground runs below. On the Bayswater Road, J M Barrie lived and wrote at Leinster Corner, looking over Kensington Gardens, and on Sunday mornings painters still hang their canvases along the park railings.

Most of the hotel stock here is small: converted terrace houses on Inverness Terrace, Leinster Gardens and Queensborough Terrace, many with twenty or thirty rooms and a night porter. Two larger names hold the park edge. Hilton London Hyde Park, on the corner of Queensway and the Bayswater Road, looks straight across at Kensington Gardens. The Grand Royale London Hyde Park, where Inverness Terrace meets the main road, is the Victorian corner building a short stroll from Queensway station.

A little further east, Royal Lancaster London and the Lancaster Gate terraces have a page of their own. Serviced apartments are everywhere, and plenty of guests are in a flat rather than a hotel room. Every one of these is a place companions call at as your visitor. We are not partnered with any of them, and a caller for a resident is exactly what a night porter expects.

Bayswater station, for the Circle and District lines, is 1 minute from the middle of Queensway. Queensway station, on the Central line, is about 3 minutes' walk south, down at the park. Paddington, with the Elizabeth line and the airport express, is around 7 minutes on foot to the north east, through the squares.

Two stations with similar names, three minutes apart on the same street, catch people out, although taxi drivers know both well. Tell the desk which street you are on, never just the station, and the question never arises.

Put a name, an hour, a length and an address into one WhatsApp or Telegram line, and expect an answer from the desk in a quarter of an hour at most. Because so many Bayswater bookings go to flats, the desk asks for the building and flat number together with your full name; for a hotel it is your room number. With those two details matched, the evening is fixed in the diary.

Expect her in less than an hour, as a rule. The three companions based in Paddington are the quickest, a few minutes away by cab, while Rosa comes across from Marylebone in about 15 minutes. She is paid in cash on arrival, counted once and put away.

19:30, meet in the lobby, or at the door of your flat. 19:45, walk north up Queensway past the restored Whiteley building and turn left along Westbourne Grove. 20:00, dinner at one of the neighbourhood restaurants between Hereford Road and Ledbury Road, where tables are small and kitchens close late. 21:45, back the long way through Kensington Gardens Square and Leinster Square, both quiet under the lamps. 22:15, a last drink wherever you are staying. 22:30, three hours complete, £700. Add a fourth hour to make it the £900 dinner date and nothing has to be hurried.

Nobody on the lineup gives Bayswater as her home district, but three companions live a few minutes north in Paddington. Laura is energetic and good at coaxing a jet lagged guest out for a walk. Nora brings a celebratory mood and a taste for something sparkling. Vanessa is quieter and curious, happiest on a weeknight.

Across the park, Sonya comes up from Knightsbridge in around 15 minutes and keeps her diary to the hours from 5pm to 10pm, a fine fit for an early Bayswater dinner when the flight has been long.

Queensway is the late dining street along Bayswater's western side. Paddington lies 7 minutes to the north east, Lancaster Gate holds the park facing hotels to the east, and Notting Hill begins where Westbourne Grove runs on into W11. Everything in the postcode is summarised on W2.