Edgware Road escorts in W2, for the conference strip after hours

North of Marble Arch the road runs past Connaught Street and Seymour Place, dips under the Marylebone Road flyover and carries on towards Maida Vale, which is simply what the same road is called once it crosses the Regent's Canal. The W2 side, to the west, is lined with restaurants whose kitchens run late and cafés whose pavement seats fill as soon as the evening cools.

A few minutes east, Church Street leads off towards Lisson Grove, with a street market by day and Alfies Antique Market inside an old department store. Bell Street holds the Lisson Gallery. Both are good reasons to arrive a little early and walk before a booking begins.

Hilton London Metropole, at 225 Edgware Road, W2 1JU, is the anchor, with more than a thousand rooms and conference floors that are busy most weeks of the year. Delegates come and go all evening, which makes a visitor at reception entirely unremarkable. A few minutes south, near the Marble Arch end, London Marriott Hotel Marble Arch sits on George Street. East across the Marylebone Road, The Landmark London occupies a grand Victorian railway hotel built around a glass roofed winter garden.

Sussex Gardens, a few minutes west, adds its long run of small terrace hotels. Companions enter every one of these as someone's invited visitor, and the agency has ties to none of them.

There are two of them, a short walk apart on either side of the Marylebone Road, and they are not connected. One belongs to the Bakerloo line; the other, on Chapel Street, serves the Hammersmith and City, District and Circle lines. Edgware Road station is 1 minute from the heart of the strip either way, so simply name your hotel rather than the station.

Marble Arch, on the Central line, is about 7 minutes' walk south. Heading west along Praed Street, Paddington and its Elizabeth line platforms are roughly 8 minutes away. Everything here is Zone 1, so her fare is always included.

Conference evenings rarely finish when the programme says, so the desk plans for slippage. Book with a start time you are confident of; if the closing dinner overruns, message before she sets out and the time simply moves. Once she is travelling, a 15 minute grace period applies. Called off with 3 or more hours to spare, a booking costs nothing, while within 2 hours of the start the charge is half.

The rest is routine. An answer inside 10 to 15 minutes, a quick check of who you are and which room you are in, then a short note that she has set off. Functions and overnights are simply planned a little further ahead so her evening can be cleared. Arrival is normally within the hour, and no journey cost is ever added in Zone 1.

Conference delegates, above all, with three days of sessions behind them and one free evening ahead. Then business travellers who chose the Metropole for its links to Paddington and the airport, and visitors spending a fortnight in the serviced flats off Connaught Street who want a calm dinner away from their own four walls. A good number ask for a plus one at the conference dinner itself, which the desk arranges as an event booking.

21:45, the gala dinner finally ends. 22:00, she meets you in the Metropole lobby, well away from the lanyards. 22:15, a walk north on Edgware Road, where the grills are still busy. 22:30, mezze and mint tea at a pavement table under a heater. 23:30, back to the hotel for a quiet drink in a corner of the bar. 00:00, two hours finish at midnight, £500. Stretch it to three, £700, if the conversation is still going well.

No companion lives on Edgware Road, but it sits neatly between two home districts. The Paddington residents, Laura, Nora and Vanessa, are 8 minutes' walk west. Liana and Rosa live in Marylebone, just to the east.

From further out, Milena comes up from South Kensington in about 20 minutes and has a real talent for rescuing delegates from conference week, while Angelika, based in Mayfair, likes to begin at the Lisson Gallery before moving on to a hotel bar.

South, the road ends at Marble Arch and the corner of the park. West along Praed Street lies Paddington. North, past the canal, the same road becomes Maida Vale. Hyde Park is 7 minutes away at the bottom of the strip.