Victoria, SW1V and SW1W: what happens when your train runs late

Moving a booking, and what it costs

Write to the desk the moment you know. Not when you arrive, not when you have checked in, but the moment the board changes. With three hours' notice or more, a booking can be moved or cancelled and nothing at all is owed; the desk simply finds another hour, that evening if one exists.

Inside two hours, half the fee applies, because the companion has already kept the evening clear and turned other things down. If nobody is there when she arrives, the whole fee does. She allows fifteen minutes past the start time as a matter of course, and beyond that Cordelia would rather rewrite the booking than hand you a shortened one at full price.

None of this is a penalty system. It is simply what the desk can and cannot absorb, written down in advance so that a late train never turns into an argument at eleven at night.

The station, and the two postcodes around it

Victoria station carries the Circle, District and Victoria lines, national rail and the Gatwick Express, and leaves about a minute to the hotel doors on Buckingham Palace Road. St James's Park, on the Circle and District lines, is roughly five minutes east.

SW1W sits to the west and north, the Belgravia side, all cream stucco and garden squares. SW1V runs south into Pimlico, lower and quieter, with terraces of flats and a grid of streets that empties by ten. The station sits between them, which is why the desk always asks for the hotel name rather than the district: the two sides of Victoria feel like different towns.

Hotels within a few minutes of the concourse

One hotel stands in its own garden at SW1W 0JW, the quietest address within five minutes of a major terminus anywhere in London. Two more sit side by side on Buckingham Palace Road at SW1W 0PS, facing the Royal Mews. A fourth is at SW1V 1EQ on the Pimlico side, and a fifth at SW1V 1QA.

As always, these are simply addresses. The desk has no arrangement with any hotel, contacts none of them, and leaves no name at any reception. A companion arrives, crosses to the lift and goes to the room.

An evening that has to fit a timetable

Most bookings here are bracketed by something: a train tomorrow morning, a flight from Gatwick at nine, a coach at seven. The desk plans backwards from that rather than forwards from the start time, and will tell you plainly when a length does not fit the bracket you have described.

Two hours at £500 is the most common booking in SW1V and SW1W by a wide margin, and it is usually the right one before an early start. Three hours at £700 suits an evening with supper in it. The ten hour overnight at £1,800 is a poor fit for a six in the morning departure, and Cordelia says so at the time rather than letting you find out at dawn.

Who writes from Victoria

People in transit, mostly, and they are the most decisive guests the desk has. A message from Victoria usually names a time, a length and a hotel in one line and expects the same back. There is rarely a conversation about which companion would suit, because the person writing is looking at a departure board.

Behind them come the residents of the Pimlico side, who book earlier and longer, and the steady trade of people who stay near the station for a night on their way somewhere else and would rather the evening were not simply a hotel bar and a television.

Lucy and Roxi

Lucy has dark curls, a soft voice and no interest whatever in rushing anyone, which is a useful counterweight to a district that runs on timetables. She likes small old rooms, the garden squares and nowhere loud. Roxi is in her early twenties with long black hair and a real weakness for a big show; an early supper and a theatre is her idea of a proper evening, and she walks home singing.

Both live in Pimlico, a few minutes south, so the arrival window here is among the shortest on the register. Everyone else in the register travels to Victoria on the same fees.

The streets around the terminus

North west across Buckingham Palace Road the squares of Belgravia begin within five minutes on foot, and the desk keeps a separate page for them. South is Pimlico and the river; east, past St James's Park, lies Westminster and the government quarter. Further west, up Sloane Street and along the King's Road, the desk covers SW3 and Chelsea as well.