My grandad looked a bit like Elvis. Everyone said so. Fat Elvis. Pork chop sideburns, raven-black hair, a couple of shades too black to be real. He tried hard to look like the King and had never given up wearing flares. His leather shoes clicked as he walked down the shabby high street; he wanted people to hear him coming. He kept two cockatoos in a huge cage in the garden, because the King had peacocks as pets, and cockatoos were the closest he could get to that. When I went to visit during the holidays, he’d let me feed them. Billy was white with a huge sunflower-yellow crest that stood up on his head. Quiff-like, he’d tell everyone, except my grandad, to ‘fuck off sonny’. Loulou was all white; she was patchy where she’d pulled out her feathers, in protest at being caged with Billy, I expect. I’d sneak her extra fruit, like bananas and grapes, and sit cross-legged by the cage. I’d tell her about school, about the times table test I did badly in because numbers made my head scramble and the girl with rotten teeth who’d pulled the chair from under me and the bus driver who’d stared at me with his narrow eyes for a bit longer than is normal. I’d tell her everything.
When I was fourteen, my grandad died. Billy followed a few days later, died of a broken heart (they said). They were buried together, grandad in his white rhinestone flares and shirt, Billy lying across his chest, his yellow crest still magnificent in death.
A man in faded blue overalls, who smelt like wet sawdust, came and took Loulou away straight after the funeral, winking as he strode out of the door. Who would I tell my secrets to now? I think about Loulou all the time. I imagine she’s somewhere tropical, her bald patches no more. It’s the least she deserves after a lifetime locked in a cage with Billy, having to listen to my grandad singing Elvis badly.
Lotty is a writer of short literary fiction. Her stories have appeared in Mslexia Magazine and Storgy Magazine, among others. Lotty was long-listed for the Bath Flash Fiction Award in both 2023 and 2024. She lives in Cardiff, Wales with her husband, daughter and dog, and has just finished writing her first novella-in-flash.
The Orange Rose 