Sometimes when I want fictional characters to kiss, I cite Adrienne Rich on compulsory heterosexuality

or: my thoughts on the new Jacqueline Wilson novel

The word keeps buzzing at the back of my brain - quietly, in the Girls quartet, as I revisit the late 90s and early 00s, in which people wrote actual letters to one another and making online friends was a strange, furtive thing to be doing. Thirteen-year-old Ellie, part of a trio of best friends that includes glamorous, flirtatious Magda and spooky, got…