Richard Osman

The Impossible Fortune

Aistė

'Exactly,' says Ibrahim. 'The answer to every dilemma is in whom you ask for advice.' 

'So you have the question. Goodness, is it all too soon, is Paul the man for me? Do I ask my mother, who will panic, or do I ask my father, who will look into my eyes and see the truth? I ask my father, because I already know the truth, and I just need someone to say it out loud for me. Of course it is not too soon. You found love, and you knew it as surely as finding a diamond.'

'When we have a dilemma, we ask the person who will give us the answer we already know. And that's why you asked me. Paul is wonderful, you are wonderful, today is wonderful.'

'Then Elizabeth will kill you,' says Bogdan.

'You don't want to find out,' says Bogdan.

You can't,' says Bogdan. 'Only God can kill Elizabeth.'

'When old friends die, you're furious, because you've never quite finished what you were saying to them.'

On the train home Elizabeth fell asleep, which is very unlike her. In the end she had her head on my shoulder, so I couldn't move. But I didn't want to either. My God, the older we all get, the more like children we are.

There are many things she should probably tell her mum one day. But who can ever really tell their mum anything? Too much static builds up over the years.

'They don't tell you, Bogdan, no one tells you.'

'About death,' says Elizabeth. 'Take every word anyone has ever written about grief. Every line every poet has ever written. Every word of every friend who breaks down in front of you, every tear you've ever seen shed. Take the whole lot of them and throw them down a well, and you wouldn't even hear them hit the bottom.'

'The world is so full of people and moments.' (...) 'There's love everywhere, every day, and there's sadness everywhere every day. Imagine all of it together. All that sadness, and all that love. Every kiss, every heartbeat, every second waiting for a lover, and every second realizing your lover won't be coming. Can you imagine all of it?'

Bogdan looks up and to the left, really giving it a good go.

'It's impossible,' says Elizabeth. It's beyond comprehension.'

'And yet,' says Elizabeth, 'it's all here in this chair. Every single bit of it, in a chair we bought in an antique shop in Stratford or somewhere or other. And Stephen swore it would fit in the back of the car, but it wouldn't, so he lashed it to the roof. Cirencester, that was it, not Stratford. And we drove home at twenty miles an hour with Stephen's arm out of the window holding it steady, and when we got it home it wouldn't fit up the stairs, so someone had to come and saw the legs off -' (...) 'And then we finally got it up here, and it didn't match the curtains.'

'But Stephen settled back into it and put his feet up, says Elizabeth. 'Stephen and the chair. The chair and Stephen?

'And now just the chair', says Bogdan. 'Because Stephen, you know.'

'They can't tell you', says Elizabeth. 'That's the thing about your own grief. No one can ever know it but you.'