When Billie arrived at Nidhogg, Bondarenko was already pacing the hall, an unlit cigarette pressed between her fingers. Nada stood aside, car keys in her hand.
"Finally!" Bondarenko barked and rushed by Billie towards the entrance door. "C'mon, Ms. Harewicke! Apparently I'm not supposed to roam without you, and I'm dying! I need my fix! First, Eric disappears somewhere for god knows how long. And then I thought I heard him come back, but he's nowhere to be found again! Coffee, Ms. Harewicke! Now!"
Billie threw Nada a questioning look. Lady Bjornsson's PA shrugged. Billie turned around, adjusted her tote on her shoulder, and followed the director. Bondarenko was already greedily inhaling the smoke, just a few steps away from the entrance doors.
"Ms. Bondarenko, I've got something I wanted to share with you," Billie started.
The Russian pushed the fag butt into a portable ashtray and stuck the next ciggy into her mouth.
"God damn aristocrats," she muttered. "No smoking anywhere. What is it, Ms. Harewicke?" she asked in a disgruntled tone.
Her gaze brushed at the white landscape in front of them, her face scrunched in an irritated grimace.
"I've looked into the script for your film, and I've got a couple of ideas that I think you might find–"
The director gave out a dismissing huff, interrupting Billie.
"Don't bother," Bondarenko scoffed. "I really don't think it's going to work. This whole place is just too cosy and healthy! It's sucking out all of my creative juices! I'm a creative prune now. There's no edge, no perverted depravity... and it's so freaking boring!" She flailed her hand, dropping a bit of ash on the ground. "And it's getting into everyone's head! It's messing up with Archie, who's being annoyingly mopey, and can't focus shit! Eric is all of a sudden a family man, and a freaking prince charming! That's the dude who once killed a man on screen by driving an electric drill into the guy's eye socket, then pulled out, and did the same on the other side!" Bondarenko made a buzzing noise and poked the air with her index and middle fingers, the cigarette between them. "He played one sick psychopath after another, and the audience bought it every time! And look at him now! He's playing Clue with the baronet's daughter; half the town is related to him; and he's childhood friends with the local ice-cream maker or some other crap like that! And Laura is all over him now! Laura, who once told Johnny Depp he needed to get his shit together if he wanted a piece of her sweet ass! Some Greek billionaire tried to buy her favours with a yacht, and she said it wasn't big enough! And now she's cuddling with Eric, her former friend with benefits, on a sofa, watching cartoons! Damn this place! It's like Wakanda meets Yefremov's Andromeda Nebula. Instead of banging his maids, your baronet courts his wife with bouquets and makes heart eyes at her at breakfast! The local padre should be hosting Queer Eye. I need to get out of this place, and I need a different stately home to film at!"
"There's an abandoned pseudo-Gothic manor on the hill in the centre of the county, and allegedly there was a triple murder there in the 1930s!" Billie hollered in despair.
The Russian's hand with the fag froze without reaching her lips.
Billie gathered her will and ventured into her explanation, rushing as much as her normally underemployed oratory skills allowed, "There's a manor on the Fleckney Hill. It's called Bran House. It's a Georgian manor house, very similar architecturally to the Nidhogg Hall. It belonged to the Ravenscrofts. In the 1930s the members of the family started dying in batches, all around the country; including the head of the family, a textile industrialist Arthur Ravenscroft; his wife; and their daughter. The three of them were found dead in the house. There was only one Ravenscroft left, an orphaned boy William Ravenscroft, who was six at the time. He was taken away to London, by some distant relatives. No one has been in the house since then. It's under the patronage of the Fleckney Historic Society. The best part of it is that the library of the Bran House was moved to Nidhogg! The Bjornssons purchased the books, the shelves, even some of the furniture pieces; and paid generously to support the Ravenscroft boy's future. Whether the money actually reached him is unknown. No one knows what happened to him afterwards."
Billie inhaled lungfuls of crispy air and went on, "So you see, you've got two, pretty much identical, houses, one for the outside and one for the inside filming. And if you give me one day, I'll get you enough photographs, newspaper articles, and semi-fictional accounts of the events, to fuel your creative juices beyond belief! And this is not Andromeda!" Billie gestured around them. "This is Tormance!"
That was when Bondarenko burst into loud laughter.
"Oh my god, how empty is your life, Ms. Harewicke, for you to have read Soviet sci-fi from the fifties?!" the director asked, looking Billlie over.
"I'm a fat, prudish unemployed librarian in a county where everyone looks like the characters of your Strugatsky brothers' Noon Universe," Billie grumbled. "How empty do you think my life is?" Billie paused for a moment and then added, "Also, I had a crush on a Russian bloke in uni; so I obsessively researched anything he ever mentioned." She wasn't even sure why she added, "And then he hooked up with me and dumped me."
"You have ba-a-ad taste in men," Bondarenko remarked dismissively, chuckled again, and discarded the second butt. "Alright, Ms. Harewicke, you convinced me. Get me photos and newspaper clips, and whatever you can find. And I'll need a tour to that Gothic house of yours. But first, coffee!"
The director headed to the car where Nada was waiting for them; and Billie momentarily closed her eyes and released a shaky breath.
She asked herself what exactly had gotten her so fired up; and she immediately firmly answered that it was because it was a Margo Adley novel, and that she was finally being the driven, dedicated professional, which she'd always been so proud of - and it had nothing with Dair having told her that it was important to him personally to secure the project happening in Fleckney.
***
The day flashed by. Billie spent it in the Nidhogg library, researching and preparing the materials for Bondarenko; only having stopped for twenty minutes, to gobble up the delicious lunch she was served, and then going back to work. Even the view of the green cloth boards with rubbed gilt illustration and lettering of the 1908 edition of The Wind in the Willows that she kept catching from the corner of her eye, hadn't deterred her once.
"Cara," Dair's voice reached her hearing through the bubble of her hyperfocus.
Billie lifted her eyes off the laptop that she'd been graciously provided with by the Bjornssons; and she blinked, returning to reality.
"Hi," she said uncertainly.
"H-have you been working here the whole time?" he asked, frowning.
Billie pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
"Yeah, I have."
She studied him. The words of her Aunt rang and clattered in her memory alike to the sound of her vintage teal-coloured Westclox alarm clock - 'You're in love with the boy, aren't you, babber?' - immediately followed by a different quote: 'And now she [Laura] is cuddling with Eric, her former friend with benefits, on a sofa, watching cartoons!'
"D-did they feed you at least, polpetta?" he asked softly.
'She [Billie] is totally his type! His two main exes were just as... plump."
Also, she had looked it up. Polpetta meant a 'meatball.' Was he concerned that she'd shrink and lose some of her circumference?
"I've had lunch," Billie muttered and then pointedly looked down at her watch. "And now I need to go home for dinner. My Aunts and my sisters are waiting for me."
"Che cosa? I th-thought we were going to Alessandro's p-place." Dair gave her a confused, maybe even hurt, look. "He and J-jackie are expecting us, since we couldn't c-come yesterday."
His accent was stronger, especially in how he pronounced 'Jackie;' and Billie once again wondered if he'd misunderstood from the beginning, and being around Billie had been the reason for his impediment, as opposed to its cure.
During her lunch she'd indulged in the one distraction she'd allowed herself today: she'd looked him up. There was a lot. It had been Billie's ignorance in the modern cinema, social media, and the collective subcultures known as 'fandoms' - that had made her think that a man of his looks and his choice in film roles wouldn't have any avid groupies. There was no other word Billie would use for the - potentially emotionally unstable - people who produced so-called 'fanart,' mediocre artistic delineations of his body, mostly unclad, often in throes of physical passion, or posed provocatively; or wrote appalling pieces of what could hardly be considered prose and was undeservingly baptised as 'fan-fiction.' Out of the available materials, she found their 'edits' - short videos compiled of scenes from his films, overlayed with popular pop songs - most disturbing. If they truly felt compassionate towards his, even most atrocious, characters - which was obviously simply caused by his unconventional attractiveness - why would they choose the clips where said characters bled, screamed, or died?!
"I can't, sorry." Billie pretended to focus on packing her belongings. "I promised my Aunts I'd be eating with them."
Billie needed to make sure that her relatives saw her in the cottage around tea time, and then leaving in the morning, every day until December 24. No doubt could be left in their minds if there was anything going on between Billie and Dair. They'd already 'attacked' her with their teas and perfumes. The logical progression would be to direct their efforts onto Dair - and they would probably start by informing him that it was in his star charts to father as many as three of Billie's children. Not much was required from the Man, by the way; which many previous males in this position had considered a blessing. Delia's and Billie's biological father was an exception, apparently; but even he hadn't stayed for long enough to 'finish the job;' and another chap had to be acquired to produce Phee.
"I c-could reschedule," Dair offered. "T-tomorrow, perhaps?"
"It's OK," Billie muttered. "You shouldn't. I don't want to cause any inconvenience, especially since you said they were expecting you tonight." She stuffed her notebook into her tote. "I'll see you tomorrow."
She made three steps towards the door, when she remembered her 'duty of care.' She turned and saw Dair still standing next to the desk she'd occupied before.
"Do you need me to–" Her hand unconsciously flew up to her lips.
"Don't bother," he grumbled - and then schooled his face in a polite expression. "You sh-should run. It's getting late. Are you g-getting picked up?"
"No, no, that's alright." Billie backed off from him. "I'll walk."
While she was ploughing through the snow on the path leading to the Crow's Vespers, she realised that that was the first time he hadn't offered her a lift or insisted on her calling a cab.