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EP: So Miss Fonseka and Miss Amaya only socialized with each other?

HF: Yes, pretty much. Like I said, we all thought Amaya was trouble, but Kaavi continued to be her friend. It’s not like we bullied her, or were mean to her, or anything like that, you know? We just didn’t want our reputations to also be ruined the way hers was.

EP: Were there any other incidents concerning Miss Bloom that you believed to be out of the ordinary?

HF: Actually, yes, now that I think about it. Again, this was a rumor. I didn’t believe it, of course, I had so many other things going on, but I’d heard she got caught, um, hooking up with Gayan Peiris. He was older too. His sister was in our grade, and when Amaya went for her birthday party, she ended up meeting Gayan, and, well, you know. So it wasn’t just a coincidence with Mr. Dole. I guess you could say that Amaya liked older men.

And then, well, Gayan, sadly, well, I guess there’s no easy way to say this. Gayan died in a drunk driving incident about a month later. And well, I don’t know how far it’s true, but apparently he had been leaving Amaya’s house when it happened. You know she lived alone with just a maid, right? Pretty unheard of, even now, but she had all this freedom, so of course she would have boys over. Gayan’s sister was, well, she was understandably upset. She accused Amaya of killing him, and they had this, well, like a screaming match, I guess you could call it. But again, of course, this was all hearsay and nothing was ever proven, of course. Gayan’s family moved to Canada shortly after. I think they wanted a fresh start.

EP: And what about Miss Fonseka? Did she have a string of older boyfriends too?

HF: Kaavi? Ha ha, no way. She’d have probably fainted if a boy so much as looked her way. No, she was quite mousy. You’d never guess it seeing her now. She’s really come into her own since we left school. Many say that Kaavi grew up after she and Amaya stopped being friends. And thank god they stopped being friends, after what Amaya did to her.

EP: And what did she do?

HF: Again, this is only what I’ve heard, but I have it on good authority that Amaya had an affair with her father. It was right after university when Amaya came to Sri Lanka on her own and stayed at the Fonsekas’ for some reason. Well, we all guessed the reason.

I mean, we mustn’t blame Amaya completely, you know. It must have been difficult for her, growing up without a father. Maybe that’s why she has this, you know, strange perversion toward older men. But anyways, I heard that that’s why they stopped being friends.

EP: You seem to have recently reconnected with Miss Fonseka. She’d invited you for quite a number of the wedding events. How did that come about?

HF: Colombo circles are quite small, you know. I bumped into her at Colombo Fashion Week last year. She was being interviewed by Hi!! magazine about her dress, and I knew the lady who was running the interview and we all got to talking. Like I said, she’s really blossomed into something stunning now that she has stepped out of Amaya’s shadow.

EP: And were you surprised to see Miss Bloom at the wedding festivities?

HF: To be honest, she didn’t recognize me, and I didn’t really recognize her at first either. She used to be so . . . confident, I suppose. Like she had the entire world in the palm of her hand, you know. Like she wasn’t afraid to just reach out and take what she wanted. But the girl I saw at Kaavi’s party was nervous and shy and looked like she’d rather be anywhere else in the world than there. I actually felt sorry for her, you know. I guess this is what you get when you live your life without caring about the consequences. Sooner or later your bad decisions catch up to you. But whatever she did get up to in university or after or whatever must have really done a number on her, because Amaya Bloom was barely the girl I knew back in school. And considering the damage she had done, maybe that’s not even a bad thing.

But something odd did happen, now that I think about it.

EP: Would you care to explain?

HF: Well, it might be nothing, but when Amaya was chatting to the group, Tehani came up to her out of nowhere. I thought it was a little strange because Tehani was, well, I don’t know how much you know about her, but she could be quite the, um, attention seeker, I suppose you could say. Especially around men. And one moment she had a group of admirers vying for her attention, and the next she brushed them all off and comes over to where we were and whispers something in Amaya’s ear. Amaya took off from the party two minutes later. It all seemed rather suspicious, if you ask me.





9


AMAYA


Four Days before the Wedding


BOMBS IN MOVIES usually had those digital clocks that let you know how much time you’ve got left in big red numbers. I’ve heard that weapons experts claim this is ridiculous. Real time bombs don’t tell the hero exactly how much longer they had to save the day. If you found a time bomb out in the field, all bets were off. You just had to diffuse it as fast as you could and hope for the best.

Just like I had no clue how long it would take for Aunty Josephina to read the letter.

And there were so many variables. Too many things that could go wrong.

I ticked them off in my head as I tried to relax a little and enjoy the party.

What if she didn’t read it? Chances: Nonexistent. There was no way she was going to let a juicy piece of potential gossip go to waste.

What if she didn’t believe it? Chances: Slightly higher, but this is the same woman who I overheard telling her friends that she’s avoiding oily food tonight because she didn’t want to attract evil spirits on her way home, so it does sound like she would believe just about anything.