The agony of watching friends succeed

I’ve just had the first sign that things are going back to normal — and that I’m going back to normal, too. I was suddenly struck by a feeling I’ve not had since the first lockdown last March; a feeling writers and journalists know all too well. Literary envy.

Whatever your profession, envy is something we all know. A colleague’s promotion or a friend’s pay increase prompts that inner voice of brattish resentment. Envy is the herpes of competitive capitalism — it disappears from view and just when you think it’s gone for good, up it pops.

But envy hasn’t had much of a chance to surface during lockdown. Everyone’s career in the so-called creative industries has been put on hold. And we’ve been too worried about the state of the world to talk about that most beloved topic of creative people: our careers.

So I was surprised by my sudden attack of envy. It came when my ex-wife Maxine sent me a WhatsApp video of her opening a box from her publisher, full of copies of her new novel, The Eighth Girl. Proudly she held her book up to the camera, beaming with joy like a mother exhibiting her newborn baby.

To have one ex-wife who has a book out is a misfortune, to have two looks like carelessness

I should point out that I have not found a publisher for my book, so I couldn’t help but wonder if it was envy that caused me to see something in my ex-wife’s beatific smile that said: hey loser, look who’s the writer now!

Of course, when your ex-wife is struck by unexpected success you’re duty-bound to take it like a man: send flowers, send texts of effusive congratulations and just keep smiling, even as you’re slowly dying inside.