Five years on, justice has remained elusive for the victims’ relatives. For Wong’s family, life will never be the same.

Wong, a gentle and reserved man, struggles to find the words to describe his beloved wife. His Facebook profile picture is a family photo taken nine years ago on a trip to Cape Town, South Africa, before the birth of their third child, his wife smiling sweetly by his side and their two children looking a little camera-shy.

Wong and Lee were high school sweethearts who met in the same class at their school in the Malaysian state of Kelantan. “We went out pretty often and I just started to grow attached to her and have feelings for her,” Wong recalls.

They began dating after graduation. Lee joined the aviation industry straight out of school, beginning her career as a flight attendant for Malaysia Airlines, while Wong continued his studies in information technology.

They had a long-distance relationship for a few years, maintained over the phone, while Wong worked in Singapore and Lee flew on domestic flights in Malaysia.

He never officially proposed, but after a decade together everything fell into place. “We had a mutual agreement and felt like it was time to get married. So we did,” Wong says.

From long-established Chinese-Malaysian families, they moved from Kelantan to Kuala Lumpur, where they started their family, and Wong began his own business in hardware servicing.

Their daughter Wong Rui-qi, the eldest of the three children, was only 13 when flight MH17 was shot down. She knew something was wrong that morning, when her father – who usually insisted she go to school no matter what excuses she had – sat her down and told her she did not need to go.

Flight MH17 was brought down by a Russian surface-to-air missile launched in eastern Ukraine, and it is widely believed pro-Russia separatists were behind the attack.

The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team has charged four suspects with murder and a trial is expected to begin in The Hague District Court in March 2020. However, none of the suspects – three Russians and a Ukrainian – are expected to appear because both Russian and Ukrainian law forbid the extradition of their citizens.

It took a week for the news of her mother’s death to really sink in for Rui-qi. “I didn’t know how to live without her,” she recalls.

Regular school counselling helped her through that difficult period. So did her aunt, who spent a great deal of time playing with her and her siblings, hoping to distract them.

Rui-qi, who turned 18 in April this year, only came to know her mother well after the accident.

“We used to be able to talk about anything. But I wasn’t very close to her because I’m more of a daddy’s girl,” she explains, at a relative’s home in the Malaysian state of Penang. “I found out a lot about her only after she was gone.”

There’s one particular promise she still remembers clearly: “Before she flew to Amsterdam, she said she’d teach me how to do my make-up when I am 16.”

With perfect coral-coloured lips and groomed eyebrows, Rui-qi has a love for cosmetics influenced by her mother. As a small girl, she would watch with curiosity as her mum got ready for work, doing her make-up in front of the mirror.

She and her brother, Wong Hon-kai, who is two years younger than her, played rock, paper, scissors to decide who got to apply her lipstick or put on her earrings. When their mother left for work, they held on to her, fighting for the last hug.

Looking back, Rui-qi realises that overcoming grief is not as difficult as many people think.

“You have to come to terms with the fact that she is no longer there. I still miss her but I no longer need her,” she says. “In Buddhism, this life is about suffering. So if she left earlier to enjoy her afterlife, I should be happy for her. By the time I reach middle age, my mother would still leave. She only left sooner and I have had to be independent earlier.”

That still does not change the fact that every Mother’s Day, as her friends celebrate with their parents and post photos with their mothers on social media, Rui-qi is made acutely aware of her mother’s absence, secretly wishing they had taken more photos together during her childhood.

“The toughest part is not having someone I can pour my heart out to. It’s not because my dad would not listen. But sometimes it’s girl talk,” she says.

At the same time, she cannot fathom how difficult it must have been for her bereaved father. “He stayed strong because he still has to take care of us. As a single parent, he has to provide double the effort and love, as well as economic support.”

After taking her public exam and entering university this year, the outgoing teenager surprised her family and friends by choosing a subject that seemed at odds with her extrovert personality: accounting. Rui-qi had considered becoming an air hostess, to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

“But I had a lot of doubts,” she says. “If I’m gone too, those around me would be very upset.”

Other fields of study she’d had in mind included hotel management, graphic design and culinary work, but she settled on a career choice offering good stability and money to support her youngest brother financially when he enters university. “My father is 50 and will have to retire then. I have to take up this responsibility.”

Eleven years younger than Rui-qi, and only two years old when the MH17 tragedy happened, Wong Shen-kai barely remembers his mother. Recently, the seven-year-old asked why other children have mothers and he does not.

Always patient, his father almost never loses his temper with him, and their grandmother often intervenes when they try to discipline the child. This does, though, leave Rui-qi worried that he is becoming spoiled.

Most of all, lingering in the family is the answerless question of “What if?” The daughter wonders what their lives would be like if her mother was still around.

Would Rui-qi have been forbidden to wear make-up or would her mother teach her each step of the routine? In the silence of the night, filled with frustration and not knowing how to deal with his children, her father also finds himself longing for his wife.

As next of kin of one of the 31 Malaysian victims, Wong regularly takes part in group meetings that keep track of the MH17 case. He received a lump sum in compensation last year, but simply shrugs when asked about the investigation, saying he is waiting for justice to be served.

Every year, the family attends memorial services held in Malaysia to commemorate the tragedy. One of Wong’s goals, however, is to take the family to Amsterdam, where a memorial park was opened in 2017 and a tree was planted for each victim – a visit that will hopefully bring some closure.

“Time passes by, but you never truly move on,” he says.