Petite: seven names, and the tape that sorts them
One drawer of the cabinetSeven women here are small framed. The tape runs from 158 cm at one end to 169 cm at the other, which needs explaining: one of the seven is tall on paper and petite in build, and she is filed here because that is what the measurement describes rather than what the number suggests.
Small is not a manner and this drawer does not imply one. Two of the seven are the quickest talkers on the list, one is the bluntest, and one will take the other side of an argument for the pleasure of it. What they do share is that none of them needs a large room to be noticed in, which turns out to matter at a table for two.
Petite, as hung
The smallest, and the quickest
Tina is 158 cm, athletic, espresso brown, and the smallest woman here. She walks to most of her bookings around Mount Street, takes the counter rather than a table and will disagree with you cheerfully to see whether you meant it. Jasmin is 160 cm and twenty-two, chestnut brown, quick, and entirely unbothered by being the smallest person in a large hotel suite.
Two who are 160 and 161
Rosa is 160 cm and curvy, her chestnut hair genuinely curly, and she wears prints most people would not attempt because she is not asking anybody's permission. Lea is 161 cm, auburn, hazel eyed and neat rather than showy; she understands the difference and dresses to it, and a restaurant seats her without being asked twice.
The middle of the drawer
Sonya is 162 cm, athletic, thirty-two, and moves like somebody who trains without talking about it. She is small and entirely unmissable, which is a combination she has had a long time to get used to. Lucy is 163 cm and slender, dark curls she has no intention of straightening, quick in conversation and impatient to reach the part of it worth having.
The one the tape misreads
Tiffany stands 169 cm and carries a petite frame, which is the sort of detail a list of heights loses entirely. She is small framed, quick on her feet, wears flat shoes to walk in and heels to sit in, and she is twenty-four. She is here because the build is what a guest is actually asking about when he opens this drawer, and the house would rather be accurate than tidy.
What the drawer is good for
Rooms that are not enormous. A hotel suite where two people are meant to talk, a small dining room, a table at a counter, an evening where nobody is performing. Two of the seven say outright on their own pages that they would rather a small room than a grand one, and none of the other five has ever needed a large one.
Four of the seven are often free at short notice, which makes this a common drawer to open for an hour at a hotel.
Where else the seven sit
Six are in brunettes and one in auburn. Two also sit in toned and athletic, one in curvaceous and one in slim and slender. By age the drawer splits four to two to one across early twenties, late twenties and thirties. If height is what you were after instead, statuesque runs from 172 cm upward.