Hollywood:

Despite having grown up in luxury with stupid amounts of expendable income, I am perfectly resigned to living up a tree after having just met a stocking-wearing criminal, where my freakishly intelligent and inexplicably well-groomed self sits around looking pretty and waiting to be used as bait.

Reality:

Despite having grown up in relative luxury with no money whatsoever, I was pretty determined not to let anything - not even my badly dressed criminal lover - get in the way of me marrying my sugardaddy, and part of that meant turning up to his stupid fair looking less like I'd been dragged through a hedge-backwards than I did on waking. Which was a task even the bravest of freakishly intelligent damsels-in-distress would have ran from screaming.

Mostly because it involved getting up before the sun to comb the tangles out of my hair, braid it again (long) and wait patiently as Ann jabbed my grandmother's antique hair pins into it. My gown that day was red silk (pretty) with gold floral embroidery, which wouldn't have been too fussy, had Ann not insisted I wear the last of my jewellery inventory (a pearl and garnet necklace given to me by the king on my holy communion). Still, I was glad I'd gone to the trouble when, three hours later sitting next to William - who was drooling over some macho-men jousting - checking myself out in the reflection of his dagger I looked halfway shaggable.

Not that I'd let him.

"When's the archery contest?"

He didn't take his eyes off the tournament "Hmm?". The two horses charged at each other. I couldn't care less, except that one of them was Henry De Winslow, who everyone knew was going to end up with Matilda Fanshaw, but he was carrying Elaine Fitzgerald's favour. Made slightly less scandalous by the fact she was his first cousin and had been very ill, but still.

"The archery contest?"

This time he actually looked at me for a second - but only because he was reaching for his wine - "Why? You hate archery."

"I never said that. I like archery...with the arrows, and things. You're thinking of arthritis. I hate arthritis."

"Do you have it?"

I realised now that what I'd might as well announced I was dirt-poor and barren and had a tendency to kill people in my sleep. "No. I'm perfectly healthy. But I hate the thought of it."

William looked at me strangely. "Is the sun too hot for you?"

"No. Why?"

"Because you're talking nonsense."

"Arthritis is a perfectly loathsome illness." A few months later I'd never have the confidence to say something like that again.

"I'm sure it is, my dear." He smiled and stroked my hair affectionately. "My sweet lunatic. The archery is after the tournament."

He'd given me the information I needed to stop the butterflies in my tummy cannibalising each other, so I let the lunatic comment slide, and willed - for the first time - for the jousters to be slower, for everything to go on just slightly slower, so Rob would realise that what he was about to do was so stupid he'd give up and go home.

But of course he didn't.

In the stories, there's almost always some feeble disguise...usually an old man. What I'd like to know is: where the hell was the medieval fancy dress old man shop in Sherwood Forest? Anyway. As it happens, Rob was wearing a disguise, of sorts - chain-mail over his tunic, the cloak and shield of a castle guard, his face obscured by a helmet. Stupid boy. I find it hard to believe William didn't at least have some tiny inkling the guard he'd never seen before with exactly the same seize, gait and colouring as a wanted fugitive with a known skill with the bow and arrow might, possibly, have been a thin disguise. But apparently he didn't, and thank God for small mercies, frankly.

Fortunately it wasn't too obvious, because he was mingled in with a load of similarly arrogant guards and knights and the occasional noble who was just in it for fun.

William had been right earlier, though. I hated archery.

Especially the tedious length of it. Even the fact Rob's life hung in the balance couldn't keep my interest for very long. But sure enough, Rob picked off the competitors one by one, eventually leaving only himself, some random knight whose name I never bothered to remember and a soldier, or something, who's name was Tom (we'd become terribly good friends later, but it really doesn't have anything to do with Rob, or anything, so I won't bore you with the details. Which, believe me, are dull.)

So anyway. It comes down to the knight, Tom and the archer formerly known as Rob.

So Tom shoots and misses the centre of the dart-board thing (I have never pretended to give a damn about Robbie's little hobbies. And don't judge me, because you know he couldn't tell you the first thing about art-house movies or vintage fashion) by a fraction of an inch. People gasped, someone screamed. Kids watched with widened eyes. I wondered why, other than the prize, anyone really cared who had the best hand-eye co-ordination.

And then the knight took his turn, shot the arrow and, for all intents and purposes, won the competition. The arrow stuck incriminating and horrible in the dead centre, making me feel a stab of relief. Now at least Rob would have a hope in hell of just leaving and going home and nothing getting any worse. A ripple of disappointment trickled through the crowed.

The knight smiled smugly at some girl in a canary yellow gown, who grinned back with a mixture of pride and stupidity. A few of the spectators turned to go and find something more interesting to watch than a rich man get slightly richer, and I found it slightly easier to feign my femminine disinterest.

"Should I let that guard take his turn?"

I came as close to a shrug as a lady of my status would ever get, ignoring the voice rising somewhere above my stomach screaming at me to stop Rob from doing his best to act like a total prick. "Why not?"

So we did nothing as Rob played up to the crowed like the arrogant knob-head he was, or as he strung his bow, letting the arrow shoot through the sky at a fantastic speed, or even as it split the knight's arrow in two, hitting the dead centre of the dead centre with the most amazing skill and precision.

I gasped in spite of myself. Had you not grown up seeing this in every Rob-related TV show and film, this would have been more impressive that it is. For a few seconds, the sound of cheering was deafening and infectious, and even William had a slight grin on his face. It took me a second to realise why that was, exactly.

At some point during the ego-boosting cheering and shouting and chanting, Rob had removed the stolen helmet, revealing to the crowed of inbred well-wishers exactly who he was. Jumping on the opportunity, William gestured to a couple of his (actual, genuine) guards, who prompltly moved in on a slightly bemused and scared Rob. Who instead of standing there waiting to be arrested, as most people would have done, attempted to jump over the enclosure fence and fade into the crowed.

Needless to say, this was not the best of plans.