The both of us were sat across each other at the table in the servants hall and there was nobody else there so I thought it would be an appropriate time to speak to her. After I'd finished the sewing I was doing, I put it down and looked up at her from across the table, she was trying her best to fix a hem on one of Lady Mary's dresses but she was shaking too much to make any progress.
"Look, Anna...Can I have a word?" There wasn't really another way to start such a conversation, I couldn't wager her reaction until she had heard me and even then her expression was seemingly unreadable.
"Well that depends Miss O'Brien, what would you like to discuss because I don't think I can listen to anymore of your spiteful comments on my husband's current situation. If it's about something else, then of course, go ahead." She said boldly, she always had been the brave one who knew about keeping up appearances better than anyone else, of course she could still seem unscathed even after everything that had happened.
"Please Anna, I want you to know that I'm so so sorry, and if I could take back every word I said in that courtroom then I would, the same way that Mrs. Hughes or his Lordship would. None of us wanted to say those things, you see me and Mr. Bates not see eye to eye but I never wanted this, not for a second. I need you to know just how sorry I am, to the both of you." Now was the time to be honest, the only way she would ever begin to forgive me is if I openly told her how awful I felt, so I did.
"I understand, on some level, Mrs. Hughes has apologized profusely for what the prosecution made her say and I am beginning to see that she had no choice. And if I'm perfectly honest with you, I don't think you wanted to say the things you had to either, though seen as your previous actions also contributed to recent events it is going to take me longer, a lot longer, to even begin to forgive you." Her face was still, she was looking daggers at me yet she still managed to keep that naïve and innocent little half-smile. All I could do was nod, a lump was rising in my throat, tears were forming in my eyes and a feeling of sickness in my gut was making itself known. I watched her go back to her work, trying to stay concentrated but failing so completely, she put down the material and began to sob quietly in to her hands, obviously unknowing of my presence.
But this tipped me over the edge, it struck the wrong chord and the guilt washed over me like a tidal wave, I began to sob with her and not as silently as she had managed to. Through blurred vision I saw her head raise from her hands and I heard her gasp of surprise, never in my ten years at Downton had anyone seen me cry, not had I any need to cry but here I sat blubbing in front of the girl who was the very least likely to see me weeping. I began to apologize over and over again, as this young woman watched me intently, trying to comprehend what was happening. I reached my hands over the table instinctively yet not expectantly, pleasantly surprised to feel her hands join mine as we both cried in near silence.
Our eyes stayed open for what seemed like hours, never losing eye contact like if we did the other might lash out. Anna allowed a small smile to creep across her face, not large enough to offend and not small enough to go unnoticed, perhaps this was the beginning of a new age. Neither of us had ever breached the subject of becoming friends because the both of us had never got on very well, since the day I arrived in that house we had just, not got on very well. She was the friendly and helpful one whom everybody liked and was always the favourite, I was the wretched old hag of a woman that nobody got on very well with and I always kept to myself.
Thomas, the only one ever to speak to me on a mildly personal level, was quite the stirrer and I had always thought him too nosey for his own good, however hypocritical it may sound. I had never really got along that well with him if I was perfectly honest with myself. Everybody thought that we were close, that we were as thick as thieves but no-one realized that we never actually got on, it was an alliance more than a friendship. Anna was the first person to ever understand that we weren't on the best of terms anymore, the sentencing of Bates' had made a divide between us.
"I'm so sorry Anna, really I am, for everything I have ever done to cause trouble for the both of you." Apologizing was the only thing I could do, there wasn't anything else I could do right now.
And that was the start of a new friendship blooming, for the both of us, a lot of things were changing.