"Shaun Hutson - Compulsion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hutson Shaun)

VERONICA PORTER BROUGHT the Fiesta to a halt behind her husband's
Peugeot and switched off the engine.

She yawned, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the rear view
mirror. She suddenly peered more closely, inspecting the lines around
her eyes.

Six months away from her thirty-first birthday and she was looking for
crows' feet. She managed a smile, then swung herself out of the car
and locked it.
The street lamp directly outside the house was on the blink again. It
buzzed like an angry wasp, the sodium glare occasionally fading, then
glowing even more brilliantly for a moment before settling into its
usual sickly hue.

She had wondered about reporting the fault to the council, but had
finally thought better of it. She had lived in Kempston all her life
and the inadequacies of successive councils were all too familiar.

Kempston was about thirty miles north of London. Politely termed an
'overspill' town, it had, during the past ten years, become more of a
dumping ground for all and sundry.

With its estates of 1950s houses and flats, it was depressingly similar
throughout its length and breadth. There had been the inevitable
encroachment of Barrett homes in the early seventies and more modern
houses had been erected for those who opted for the millstone of a
mortgage. But for the most part, Kempston's council residents dwelt in
the same kind of accommodation their parents had known.

Of course, there was central heating now. Double glazing. Wall and
loft insulation. Even fitted dishwashers and washing machines. But no
matter how many examples of modern convenience were crammed inside, the
houses themselves belonged to a more sedate age.

Ronni was a good example of this. She and her husband had well-paid
jobs and enjoyed most of life's comforts. But she felt as if she
somehow belonged on the estate. Her father still lived less than half
a mile away in the house where she had been born.

The close proximity to London made Kempston ideal commuter country and
prices of private houses had risen accordingly during the last ten
years. But the town was predominantly a council-house haven.

Naturally, many had heeded the Tory mantra in the eighties and chosen
to buy their council houses (there were enough two-up-two-downs with
fake brick cladding to attest to that). But the majority of the people
on the Waybridge Estate and all the other estates in Kempston desired
nothing more than a roof over their heads and cared little whether that
roof was owned by the council or ransomed by a building society.