Read an Excerpt from Richard Osman’s ‘The Impossible Fortune’ (Exclusive)

Elizabeth is starting to feel again. Precisely what she is starting to feel, she couldn’t say. But there’s something there, and it’s not just the brandy. She’s on alert, but, as yet, with no idea why. To her left, Ron raises a pint to the Sussex sunset. “I’ve been to a lot of weddings, mainly my own, but that was the best yet. To Joanna.”

“To Joanna,” says Ibrahim, raising a whisky. During the ceremony he had cried even more than Joyce.

“And to Paul,” says Joyce. “Don’t forget Paul.” “Hell of a speech his best man made,” says Ron.

The best man. Elizabeth has been thinking about him. “He was nervous,” says Joyce.

“Either way,” says Ron, “you don’t throw up. It’s not your wedding, mate.”

“He pulled focus,” agrees Ibrahim.

Even before the unfortunate vomiting, there was something off about the man. Was that what Elizabeth has been feeling? She could have sworn he looked at her at one point. Just a glance but a deliberate one.

“What did you make of it all, Elizabeth?” Ibrahim asks.

Elizabeth thinks for a while, and musters a small smile. The smile is real, she knows that, and she knows that one day it will be bigger. “It was wonderful — they looked very happy. And Joyce looks very happy.”

“She’s half a bottle of champagne to the good,” says Ron.

Joyce gives a slight hiccup. The four friends watch the sunset in silence, the stone terrace of the grand house all to themselves. From inside, the sound of music and laughing. Elizabeth looks at her friends, and thinks about Stephen. Joyce spots it — Joyce spots everything — and puts her hand on Elizabeth’s arm.

“Thank you for coming though, Elizabeth,” says Joyce. “I know it’s still hard.”

“Nonsense,” says Elizabeth, ready to launch into a lecture about self-reliance. But Joyce is right: it is still hard. Almost impossible, in fact. She takes another sip of brandy and looks down. “Nonsense.”

Elizabeth turns as Joanna steps through a set of double doors onto the terrace. “Well, I wondered where you’d all crept off to. What are you doing? Shooting up?”

Ron stands and hugs her. “Just looking for five minutes’ peace. How’s the best man?”

“Nick?” says Joanna. “He’s rehydrating.” Nick, that was the name. Nick Silver. “And the tablecloth?” Ibrahim asks.

“Ruined,” says Joanna. “That’ll be coming out of the deposit. Now who’s coming for a dance? Mum? Everyone wants to dance with you. They seem to find you charming.”

“I am charming,” says Joyce, then hiccups again. “That’s where you get it from.”

Ron helps Joyce to her feet. “Perhaps Paul’s dad might like a dance, Joyce?”

“Not interested,” says Joyce.

“I mean,” says Ibrahim, “you did have your hand on his knee for the entire meal.”

“I was welcoming him to the family,” says Joyce.

“Never heard it called that before,” says Ron, and downs his pint.

“And, Ibrahim,” says Joanna, “I wonder if you would like to dance with me?”

“Well, that would be my pleasure,” says Ibrahim, standing. “What will it be? A foxtrot? A quickstep?”

“Whatever you can manage to ‘Like a Prayer’ by Madonna,” says Joanna. Ibrahim nods. “We shall improvise.”

Everyone is standing now, and they begin to head to the doors. But Elizabeth stays where she is. Joyce puts her hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“Are you coming?”

“Ten minutes,” says Elizabeth. “You go and have fun.”

Joyce gives her shoulder a squeeze. How gentle Joyce has been with her since Stephen died. No lectures, no homilies, no empty words. Presence when she sensed it was needed; absence when she knew Elizabeth needed some time. Ron has been there with hugs; Ibrahim, the great psychiatrist, would try to nudge her this way and that, thinking she wouldn’t notice. But Joyce? Elizabeth had always known that Joyce possessed an emotional intelligence she lacked, but the sheer grace with which she had conducted herself this last year was extraordinary. The gang disappear through the doors, and Elizabeth is alone again.

Again? Elizabeth is always alone now. Always alone, and never alone: that was grief.

The sun has disappeared behind the South Downs. Always alone, but never alone. Elizabeth feels her senses awakening again. But what is it?

From an avenue of trees beneath the terrace to her left, Elizabeth hears a noise. A man steps out from behind a tall oak and begins to walk toward her. So that was it: someone was out there in the half-light. That was the sense that was reawakening. As he starts walking up the stone steps onto the terrace, the now familiar figure of Nick Silver, the best man, comes into the light. He nods at the chair next to Elizabeth. “D’you mind?”

“Of course,” says Elizabeth. She hears whooping from inside the house.

That will be Ibrahim dancing, no doubt. Nick sits. “You’re Elizabeth,” says Nick. “I know you know that.”

“Afraid so,” says Elizabeth. She notices, with relief, that Nick has changed his shirt. “Do you have something on your mind, Mr. Silver?”

Nick nods. He looks up at the sky, and then back at Elizabeth. “Thing is, somebody tried to kill me this morning.”

“I see,” says Elizabeth. Something jump-starts inside her. For the last year, her heartbeat has felt like a machine, a mechanical pump keeping her alive against her will, but now it feels flesh. “You’re sure?”

“Certain,” says Nick. “When you know, you know, right?”

“And you have proof?” Elizabeth asks. “A lot of your generation can be overdramatic.”

Nick holds up his phone. “I’ve got proof.”

Elizabeth feels a familiar gravity begin to pull her in. Should she leap clear while she still can?

“Does someone have a good reason to kill you?” asks Elizabeth. She is not leaping clear. Of course she is not leaping clear. Where on earth would she leap to? She is all out of solid ground.

Nick nods. “Yep. A very good reason. To be fair.”

A path clears in Elizabeth’s mind: it’s an old track overgrown with weeds, but there it is. “And do you know who?”

“This is just between you and me?” says Nick. “I can trust you?”

“That’s a question for you, Mr. Silver,” says Elizabeth. “Not for me.”

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The man is shaking, on a warm evening. “I can give you some names, yep.”

“More than one person wants to kill you?” says Elizabeth, eyebrow raised. “And yet you seem fairly harmless?”

“Thank you,” says Nick.

“Why have you come to me?” Elizabeth asks. “And not, say, our good friends in the police force?”

“I just…” Nick starts. “I don’t want to tell the police, for all sorts of reasons, and I’d heard about you from Paul. Your reputation.”

“I’m sure he has exaggerated it,” says Elizabeth. One can forget that one has a reputation.

“I just wondered,” says Nick, looking at her with a fear she has seen so many times over the years. The fear of a man with a single foot over a cliff edge. “If I tell you everything, do you know someone who could help me?”

Elizabeth had been ready to say no to this wedding. To stay at home and read. To look over at Stephen’s chair. To punish herself. But she’d said yes instead. Something told her it was time to start again. She thought perhaps it was the prospect of seeing love at first hand, but, no, it was far better than that. It was a best man with a death threat.

Trouble is much like love: when the time is ready, it will find you. And so here she was at the wedding.

Does she know someone who could help him? Elizabeth looks at Nick, nods and takes his hand.

“Mr. Silver, I do.”

From THE IMPOSSIBLE FORTUNE by Richard Osman, to be published on September 30, 2025 by Pamela Dorman Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Six Seven Entertainment Ltd.

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman goes on sale Sept. 30 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.