Surrender by Donna Malane

anyone who thought of harming me. There’s something about walking the streets at night that I’ve always loved and Wolf gets to schmoozle in and out of people’s front yards, which in daylight I can’t let him do. It’s the voyeur in me, I guess. I love to glimpse people’s lives through partly closed curtains, love the smells from dinner, the clanging of dishes, the flickering of television screens or thud of music, the sounds of little kids giggling and running up stairs, probably on all fours. It’s like that old song says, ‘homes full of people’.
    When Sean and I first moved in together we used to walk the streets. It started as house-hunting but then we developed this game where we’d each pick out the house we liked and make up a story about us in it. We’d invent a life for ourselves. We were a couple of kids playing house, I guess. Playing mothers and fathers.
    After we’d done that for a while we’d go back to our two-room bedsit and crawl under the sheets and make love until we were exhausted and aching, our limbs wrapped around each other, the heady fug of sex enveloping us. No matter how hard we tried, we knew there was no comparison. Our life together was far better than anything we could make up. Even then, right at the start, we’d talked about getting pregnant, but knew we were too selfish. We couldn’t get enough of each other and neither of us was ready to share the other person with a demanding baby. We liked to talk about it though — the idea that what we were doing could create a life made up of the two of us was an aphrodisiac. I always knew when I was ovulating and it was as if Sean’s body knew too. He’d thrust harder and deeper and then just hold himself there, deep inside me, and wait. He’d look at me and we’d both just know . Is that how it was with him and the little blonde Sylvie? Did he look at her and did they know ? I had no right to ask. I had no right to even imagine how they conceived their child together. That’s the terrible thing when you let your partner go — their life’s got nothing to do with you any more.
    It was a cool night and most people had their curtains pulled tightly shut so there wasn’t much to see in the way of happy families. Wolf was cheerfully occupied trotting from fencepost to lamp post inhaling urine odours, but tonight all those lights behind curtains, those voices and thuddings on floorboards made me feel excluded. Here I was at twenty-eight, walking the streets on my own, envying other people’s lives, with only an empty fridge and even emptier bed to go home to.
    Wolf’s ears pricked up and his body tensed some moments before I saw the cat on the letter box, eyes glassily reflective, its long, albino fur translucent in the streetlight. Wolf’s training kicked in and he immediately came to heel and sat, leaning his right shoulder into my calf. Tension quivered through his body as he restrained the impulse to rush at it.
    I knew that in his own canine way he saw that cat running ahead of him, felt the hot-breath exhilaration of the chase, the final lunge and satisfaction of that warm, silken body in his jaws, the glorious, killing shake and then the heavy body, limp and acquiescent, the taste of blood. Instead, he waited for my command, straining against the invisible lead of his training. Every fibre of his being wanted to chase that cat and kill it, but he’d been conditioned not to. No physical restraint, just imposed control.
    It was both remarkable and strangely tragic to witness. He was no different from us humans, really. I cupped the bump on the top of his head.
    ‘Good dog,’ I told him. ‘You’re a good dog.’ And though his tail gave one swift whack in response, his body still quivered with the effort to restrain his natural yearning.
    Usually I discourage him, but I let Wolf climb onto the bed with me. I was woken some hours later by rhythmic jolts as Wolf lightly yelped and growled. He was after that cat in a