I looked around, trying to find the perfect person to help me. It couldn’t be just anybody. It had to be someone close enough to the family to be taken seriously, but who wasn’t too loyal to the Fonsekas either.

I spotted Andre, the designer from this afternoon. He was chatting to a young woman next to him. Would he work? I inched my way closer, wondering if there was an opening in their conversation.

“I’m telling you, child, she’s the fakest attention-seeker I know, but you didn’t hear it from me, okay?”

The woman threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, Andre, you’re such a devil, I tell you.”

“I’m just honest, darling. Karma is a bitch, but, well, maybe not as big a bitch as I am. She’ll have what’s coming to her, mark my words.” More laughter from them both.

It didn’t sound like the kind of conversation I’d want to interrupt. I could always tell when someone was out for blood during a Colombo gossip session. But who could help with my own plans?

Luckily for me, the answer presented itself in the form of one of the heavily coiffed, sprayed, and lacquered aunties from this morning.

“Amaya, no? Hello, darling,” she called out from her chair, opening her arms to me.

“Hi, Aunty Josephina, how are you?” I matched her energy as I bent over and gave her an air-kiss.

“This is one of Kaavi’s dear friends,” she explained to the other aunties at the table. Her display of happiness was definitely more for their benefit than mine. “She’s flown down from LA for the wedding,” she said in a mock whisper, raising her eyebrows like it was a juicy secret.

“I was in LA last year,” said one aunty with an over-elocuted British accent that most of the older generation had perfected, having grown up during the overlap of colonial Ceylon. “Didn’t like it at all. Quite the madhouse, I tell you.”

I smiled. “It definite—”

“I much prefer London,” she continued, not caring about my views on LA at all. “It’s a madhouse there, too, but at least I’m used to that particular type of madness.” She looked around at the rest of the table, which was their cue to burst into laughter.

“And you know, no matter what, I just can’t understand what those Americans are saying half the time. They are butchering the English language, I tell you. Absolutely butchering it.” Another round of laughter. Sri Lankan aunties have always been more protective of the queen’s English than the queen herself.

The aunties might be vicious, but they are old. I bet they would snap like twigs in my hands if I could just have a try.

“What’s funny, darling?” Aunty Josephina asked, leaning close to me. Her breath smelled rotten.

“Sorry, Aunty?”

“You were smiling to yourself, just now. Is it Aunty Cynthia and her dry jokes?” She giggled to herself and I joined her. She had a piece of something orange stuck in her teeth.