EP: Thank you for coming in, Miss Faleel. My name is Eshanya Padmaraj. Can I offer you a glass of water?

HF: No, thank you, Miss Padmaraj. I’m just quite confused. We’ve been locked in our hotel rooms from morning. I’m told that the wedding has been canceled, yet we aren’t allowed to leave. Someone sent me a text saying Kaavi was murdered. Is this true? I’d really like to know what’s going on.

EP: I understand, Miss Faleel, and I thank you for your patience. Unfortunately, yes, it does appear that the wedding has been canceled, and we are concerned for the well-being of the bride. While I do have sympathy for your frustrations, I’m afraid that time is of the essence here, and we are doing our best to gather as much information as possible and investigate what has happened to Miss Fonseka. Your cooperation would be much appreciated, and we were hoping you could answer a few questions about Miss Fonseka and her family.

HF: Y-yes. Of course. Whatever to help. Of course.

EP: Could you please state your name and address for the record?

HF: My name is Husna Faleel and I reside at 678 Ferdinand Place, off Hill Street, Dehiwala.

EP: How do you know Miss Fonseka?

HF: Kaavi and I went to school together.

EP: And you’ll remained friends from your school days?

HF: Not exactly. We weren’t very close in school. Kaavi was very shy and we were in different circles.

EP: And what circles were those?

HF: Well, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I was head girl and athletics captain, so you could say that I was quite involved in school activities. Kaavi was more studious and quiet. She mostly hung out with her best friend, Amaya.

EP: And you were not close with Miss Bloom either?

HF: No. Not that I had anything against the girl, of course, but she was a bit . . . much. She had this, well, loud personality. Very different family life from mine, too, from what I gathered. She came and went as she pleased. Never had to ask anyone for permission to do anything. It just wasn’t, well, proper, you know.

And there was that incident with Mr. Dole, our physics teacher.

EP: Would you care to elaborate on that?

HF: Well, it was a long time ago, you know, and now thinking about it, I don’t even know how much of it was real and how much were rumors. But the talk was that Amaya developed a bit of a crush on Mr. Dole. I mean, he was very handsome, and young for a teacher. He was only here to get some teaching experience, I think. He’d just graduated from Imperial College London, so he had this faint British accent. Many of the girls, not me, of course, but many of the girls were quite taken by him.

But Amaya is the only one who, you know, did something about it. She’d hang back after school to ask him questions. She was seen leaving an empty classroom with him a few times. Private tuition, she’d say, but, well, you tell me if it’s appropriate for a fifteen-year-old to be left unsupervised with a good-looking twenty-three-year-old physics graduate. There were times she would ask Kaavi to cover for her, I’m sure, because Kaavi was sneaking around after school as well.

But then I think Mr. Dole got transferred or something. He just disappeared. It was quite strange actually, because it was right in the middle of term and we didn’t have a replacement for an entire month and our O Levels were just around the corner. As you can imagine, the rumor mill really got going. They said she had something to do with him going missing. They said he couldn’t handle her so he ran off back to England. They said, well, they said quite a number of things, but as always, people gossiped for a while and then someone got caught making out behind the canteen and things went back to normal. Well, kind of. Amaya had gained a bit of a reputation, you know, and many of the girls didn’t want to be friends with her anymore.

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.