That’s the second thing I think of when I think of Heddy Partridge. After the ballet incident. She got breasts too soon, before it was fashionable to have them. And we could all see them, two fat bumps inside her white school shirt, no matter how hard she tried to hide them. ‘Heddy’s got boobs,’ we used to say, and the boys would run their hands up her back, to see if she was wearing a bra. Then they’d twang the strap and Heddy would pull away, embarrassed to the point of tears. ‘Show us your boobs,’ they’d chant, and she started standing with her shoulders sloping forwards, trying to hide them. We had our own swimming pool at junior school, with changing rooms right by it: one block divided into two by a partition wall, girls on the left, boys on the right. The silly person who’d designed the changing rooms had put full-sized windows in, all along the front, so you could see straight in. So naturally the boys used to sneak out from their side of the building and dash across to ours to get a look at us when we were changing.
