AN: The characters and places you recognise belong to Julian Fellowes.
There was a reason for the seating arrangements in the servants' hall, as there was in so many of the daily routines and tasks in a maid's life. Mr Carson would sit at the head of the table, as the captain of the ship he seemed to be, regarding Downton's workers. Mrs Hughes, always at his right. It had not taken Anna long to realise that, truth to be told, she was as much of a captain as the butler, and sometimes she suspected that even more so.
And here is where she stopped understanding the reasons behind hierarchies; she would have thought the position of the valet would be higher than that of her Ladyship's maid, and yet, O'Brien was to sit next, on Mr Carson's left, while the valet's place was on Mrs Hughes' right. And then there was she, head housemaid, the first of a line of maids it was her work to supervise.
The table was large enough, but space was not very abundant in the servants' quarters.
There had been nothing unpleasant about Mr Watson, but his elbows did had a tendency to occupy a tad more room than he was supposed to, so Anna was not entirely sorry that she would not have to share daily meals next to him anymore. It gave her, however, a reason to be curious about who the next valet would be, and a motive other than being civil for trying to be kind.
It turned out he had been somebody easy to be friendly with. There was a hidden sense of humour that sometimes Mr Bates would chose to display with a remark or a smile that would reach his eyes. Anna found herself not only tolerating, but looking forward to mealtimes sitting next to him or the odd moment where their paths would cross during duty upstairs.
But it wasn't until that day, when he purposely chose to sit next to her in an empty table that suddenly looked so large, that Anna felt it. It was something else, different from the shared glances, the small smiles or the mute comments.
"Alone at last."
Breath caught in her throat as her heart started beating faster; it took her a moment to recognise the warm feeling spreading inside her chest.
Hope.