My name is Natasha. I have a great job at a top TV company, a beautiful penthouse flat... and I'm in love with a writer who already has a girlfriend.
My name is Sophie. I love my boyfriend. He is a very talented photographer, good-looking and we've been together for four years... Trouble is we still live in a hell-hole and he won't propose.
Natasha and Sophie met at Betterton Ladies College when they were eleven. Both of them stood out in the class, Natasha because she was tall for her age and Sophie because she spoke with a weird sing-song accent that was quickly bullied out of her. They became best friends, and still are except for one thing - both are secretly envious of each other's lives, striving for happiness and slowly learning that they are searching for it in all the wrong places...
Julia Llewellyn on If I Were You and dreaded 'Friend Envy'
For almost 15 years, I've been a feature writer for several national newspapers, including The Times and The Sunday Telegraph. I've auditioned to be a knife-throwers assistant, masqueraded as a sex addict to infiltrate a meeting of Sex Addicts Anonymous, been to various war-torn countries such as Haiti and Sierra Leone and jetted round the world, interviewing movie and music stars. The high point of it all was when I was sent to New York for the weekend to research an article about Christmas shopping in Manhattan. I knew that no story could trump this and I might as well retire then and there.
As well as the journalism, a couple of years ago I wrote my first novel The Love Trainer. Based on my experiences with various friends and my misguided attempts to sort out their disastrous love lives, it was published by Penguin, who also signed me up to write two more novels. The second, If I Were You, is based on a subject very close to my heart – a subject I realised you never hear anyone talk about: Friend Envy. My girl friends have always been the most important constant in my life yet at the same time I am ashamed to admit I have often harboured deep feelings of envy for them.
From my best friend at school, whom I deeply resented for ages because she was more popular than me (probably because she was a nicer person), to a supposedly dear friend at university who at times I sometimes had difficulty being in the same room as because she was so pretty and… worse… thin, to my office buddy who was so effortlessly eclipsing me career-wise, to my mummy friends now, whose rich husbands mean they can afford a full-time nanny when they don’t even work - several friendships have been soured by this horrible emotion. Yet while we normally confide in our girl friends about the most intimate details of our lives, for obvious reasons this subject remains taboo. It was a fascinating subject to write about and to find humour in – because I believe once you laugh at a negative emotion you negate its power to harm.
While writing the book, I became pregnant with my first child. Two days after I delivered the first draft of the manuscript I gave birth to Sasha. Like everyone I was sure having a baby wouldn’t change my life and like everyone, 14 months on, I find my life has altered completely, that having a baby is both far, far tougher and far, far more rewarding than I could ever have imagined. All my priorities are different and I have done what I always feared and let myself go. I’ve stopped shopping for clothes, rarely go out and when I was recently offered a free, glamour-filled weekend in New York turned it down because I didn’t want to leave Sasha.
Now, it’s only a matter of time until I start wearing M&S Footgloves and let my hair revert to its natural colour. Fortunately I spend most of my working life chipping away at novel number three, so there are few witnesses to my rapid decline. When I flick through magazines and see pictures of more beautiful, richer and more successful women, I now feel nothing but a genuine: “good for you, but I'd rather be me."
For further information please contact Natalie Higgins on 020 7010 3599 / natalie.higgins@uk.penguingroup.com
