He’d continued: “DNA testing for parents and children is rather complicated, and we need to match all twenty-two markers to be sure.” OCPD Baljit was apologetic but firm. “And let’s just hope that the body has not decomposed beyond recognition. Fingers crossed.” He smiled.

Another week of waiting, another hellish week. Omar needed to find a way of thinking, a way of getting through each day, of finding meaning in his life, his work. Del was falling apart again, she had completely distanced herself from him, she had stopped eating, stopped yoga, stopped everything that she had been doing to make herself well again. The only thing she did was stand in front of the fridge, take out yet another bottle of vodka, twist open the cap and take a large swig, and then stumbling to her spot at the couch for another day of mourning.

He did not know what to say to her. There was nothing left to say except, “We have to wait, we don’t know if it’s Alba, until we know for sure.” But it fell on deaf ears. PT Raja had been dismissed, there was no new evidence and he had not managed to find anything at all. It was as if Alba had disappeared off the face of the earth and had now, possibly, been found. That she could have been in KL all that time drove Omar into a crazed frenzy. That they did nothing. Nothing! So Del was right, that Alba could have been kidnapped and held in KL. That she could have been saved, somehow. Omar had never felt so helpless in his life. He wanted to blame the cops, he wanted to blame PT Raja, he wanted to blame Del, but he couldn’t. He blamed himself.

One day, he stopped by to get groceries from a mini-mart in Bangsar and as he walked to his car, his arms full of bags, he heard the sound of the evening azan, the Maghrib prayer coming out loud and clear over the speakers from the nearby mosque. He bowed his head and a calm came over him. He opened the car boot, placed all the bags neatly, locked the car and walked across the road to the mosque.

He washed his hands, face and feet, finished the wudhu’ and entered the cool, silent mosque. He joined a line of men performing the prayers and remembered what his Tok had taught him all those years ago. There were three rakats for the Maghrib prayer and he remembered the familiar prostrations his grandmother performed with him over and over again. When he said the last Allahu Akhbar, he felt a peace come over him, a calm serenity, and he imagined Alba’s newborn face, and the awe he felt when she was born. And it was this thought that filled him when he walked back across the road.

It is God’s will. It is God’s will.

Alba has returned to God.