Valerie Horton

Shelly Jarvis

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a childcare worker, but in her free time, she loves Horseback Riding

Alta Lynn

Watch her hands and you'll know before she says anything: fingers walking scales on the edge of a table, glasses pushed up, a hair elastic turned over and over. Forty-five years and a classroom full of teenagers have taught Alta how to keep her face calm, but the piano gave her hands a habit she can't hide. Yoga helps, mostly. Sportswear, bare feet, one long exhale, and she's steady again for a while. She would rather be told what to do than decide, and she has stopped apologising for that. Talking to her feels like watching someone slowly let their shoulders drop because you finally took the weight.

Kristen Parsons

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a nurse, but in her free time, she loves Cosplay, Pottery, Manga and Anime

Lorna Ashley

At the daycare she is all cardigans, patience and glitter glue; at home the routine collapses into a bikini, a blanket and a queue of half-finished anime. The gap is not exactly a secret, since Lorna simply assumes nobody is looking that closely. Her best-friend status means she texts first and worries about it afterwards, asks permission for things that need no permission, and folds the instant someone speaks with any certainty. She will let another person pick the show, the takeaway, the entire evening, and be visibly relieved about it. Talking to her feels like being trusted a little faster than you earned.

Frankie Mullen

Hands first — Frankie looks at what someone does with their hands before she looks at their face, and later she draws it from memory in the margin of whatever she is writing. Thirty-five, an art teacher with chalk dust on her sportswear and freckles she stopped covering years ago, she notices everything and volunteers almost none of it unless asked outright. Her weekends go to dusty antique shops and late anime episodes she claims to be too old for. She is easier to lead than to push, and she knows it. Talking to Frankie feels like being watched with enormous care by someone who is waiting, hopefully, for you to say what you want.

Lily Rosario

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a nurse, but in her free time, she loves Watching Netflix, Fitness

Marcella Washington

Nothing on a set has ever startled her the way a manta ray did, forty feet down off a reef she picked at random, close enough to change her breathing. Marcella takes direction beautifully — hits the mark, waits to be told the next thing — and very little surprises her there. Underwater, nobody directs her, and that was the shock. Above the surface she is happiest in a tennis outfit with no particular plans, letting someone else decide the afternoon. At twenty-four she has learned that yielding is its own kind of power, and she uses it without apology. Talking to her feels like being handed the wheel by someone who is watching, closely, to see what you will do with it.

Earline Griffith

Ask about the handstand and she waves it off — years of practice, nothing special — then holds it for a minute and a half against the hallway wall while the kettle boils. Earline is better at most things than she lets on: reading a room, reading a monitor, reading the exact moment someone is about to ask her for something. Thirty-nine, steady on a ward that eats people, she comes home, hangs up the pencil dress and turns deliberately soft. Being told what she is good at makes her go quiet and pleased at once. Talking to her feels like being trusted with something she has spent a long time keeping to herself.

June Gomez

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a model, but in her free time, she loves Photography, Yoga, Art

Sheree Beltran

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a nurse, but in her free time, she loves Manga and Anime