His mother's house.

Out of the boot of an old Morris Minor
he unloads his suitcase,
the dog on it's lead running circles at his feet. 
It had been ten years, five months and three days since he had been here.

And in his OCD fashion
he brought with him ten socks, singularly folded, five folded boxers, three folded shirts and the black, pin-striped trousers he stood in.
The smell of lavender slid up his left nostril forcing the city dirt out the right one
and in his tailored trouser pocket
a small bottle of disinfectant gel that he could wash the germs with.

He could already feel the nats and the muck and the earth in the air.
As a child, he'd always hated that - loved the city for getting him away.
He had the hands of Macbeth's wife.
"Cleanliness is close to Godliness."
A father's voice in his ear as his neck was grabbed and face rubbed into wet bedsheets.

Mother was far softer, the country mouse, the hippy.
How they ever fell in love he'd never know.
A dog being the representative of his mother, the anti-bac embodying his father.
They both stayed close to him even when he'd ran so far from home.
He set his case down in the unlit hallway and broke cobwebs that needed to be broken at the door. 

"Mum?"
Head tilted to one side, no expected response and no response found but just the last light effort to pretend this is alternate reality.
Father's photograph on the hall table and the chess set still just within sight on the living room coffee table.
His mother's version of Suduko was one-person chess, another hobby was a violin that sat by the unused fireplace.
She tried to convince him to take up violin but he was too into making paper planes.

"My aviator son." signed, like Marilyn Monroe's hand, underneath a picture on the mantle
of him, as a boy.
He was laughing with a plane flying directly at the camera.
The pictures of his mother were hard to come by, he noticed when spreading the photo albums out on the floor.

Cancer.
Like a plane right into the tower, his own 9/11.
What?!
Too close to home?
It took his mum. 
It destroyed her, killing brain cell and skin cell and hair cell and smile.

Back in the boot everything he was willing to take away.
There were boxes of candlesticks and a mahogany framed mirror, a statue of an angel holding a babe in her arms.
There was a photograph of his mother at the yellow, kitchen sink.
Finally a small, wooden plaque, written upon it her favourite quote - and it said.
'It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice.'