Travel, and what it costs before you agree to it

Airports, and the hours around them

Heathrow and Gatwick are taken as bookings of three hours at £700 or longer. Her journey out and back is inside those hours rather than charged separately, which is the honest way to price it and occasionally the more expensive way for you, so it is worth saying that a four hour booking at £900 makes more sense than a three hour one that is mostly a motorway.

Tell Tamsin the terminal and the time you land, not the time you hope to be through. She would rather build in twenty minutes than have a companion standing in an arrivals hall.

A night outside London

A country hotel, a house past Richmond, a wedding two counties away. Treat it as an overnight at £1,800 with a fare beside it, and give two days if you can, because the trains matter and so does what she is expected to wear. She travels with one bag and dresses for the room you name. If the occasion has other guests at it, read the client dinners page as well, since the practical parts are the same.

Several days, and how they are quoted

Longer trips are priced on request. That is not evasion, it is that a figure invented before the dates exist is worth nothing to either of us. Say where, how many nights and what the days are meant to hold, and back comes one written total covering her hours and her travel. Flights and rooms are booked by you, in your name, and she needs the details a clear day before departure rather than at the gate.

What she needs to know, and what she will not ask

She needs the itinerary, the dress of the thing and roughly who else will be there. She will not ask what any of it is for, and she does not discuss a guest's business with anyone at any point afterwards. Documents are her own affair and are in order before a trip is agreed, which is checked here rather than assumed.

Four who are good away from home

Patricia is well travelled and quiet about it, and names no places, hotels or people. Karolina is economical with words and entirely unbothered by a long wait in a station. Vanessa is slow, gentle company and happy with a first hour in which nobody says much. Laura prefers daylight, walks further than you expect and is restful at the end of a difficult week. Three of them also appear under statuesque.

When a trip changes shape

Trains are cancelled and flights move, and none of it is her fault or yours. If a departure slips by a few hours, write to Tamsin and the hours are counted from the new time rather than the old one. If the trip falls through altogether, the ordinary terms apply to her fee: three hours' notice or more before she is due to set out and nothing is owed, less than that and half stands. Tickets bought in your name are yours to change or reclaim, and she is never charged for, nor charges for, a journey she did not make.

Writing about a trip

Give the dates, the destination, where she would be staying and what the days hold. The reply carries a name, the hours, the fare and one total, and nothing is arranged until you have said yes to all of it. Her fee reaches her in person at the start, as it does at home. The rates page covers journeys beyond the second zone in full.