by Dylan Howard
This last quality would certainly hold Kate in good stead in the years to come.
Another Old Malburian, Sasha Howard, recalled how the school taught her positivity: “We were taught to be proactive, to push ourselves, get things done, and be happy, too. I can talk to anyone of any age or gender with total confidence.”
While many of her peers enjoyed hectic love lives with their male counterparts at posh schools around the country, building the connections that would sustain the next generations of the aristocracy, Kate kept herself more or less out of the dating frenzy. “She was very good-looking and a lot of the boys liked her,” recalled Jessica Hay. “But it used to just go over her head. She wasn’t really interested, she had very high morals.”
When it came to the all-crucial matter of gentlemen friends, Kate kept a discreet profile, for the most part. Despite not wishing to be seen to be an easy catch, she had no lack of admirers, following her 1998 makeover, but still managed to avoid any public affairs or romances. “I got the distinct impression that Catherine wanted to save herself for someone special,” said her friend Gemma.
There were rumors of affairs with handsome male Marlburians Charlie von Mol, Willem Marx, and Oliver Bowen—all sporty, popular chaps, much lusted after by the school’s female contingent. However, there was one young man for whom Kate’s crush was well known. Over late-night microwaved Marmite sandwiches with friends Jessica and Gemma, Kate would semicomically rhapsodize over Prince William. “We would sit around talking about all the boys we fancied,” said Jessica. “Catherine would say, ‘Oh I don’t really like any of them, they’re all a bit of rough.’ Then she would joke, ‘There’s no one quite like William, I bet he’s really kind, you can tell just by looking at him.’”
Kate ended her time at Marlborough a polished and popular graduate. Her younger sister, Pippa, had also proved a resounding success at the school, following in her sister’s footsteps but from the outset exuding a glamorous confidence and pizzazz that came to be synonymous with the Middleton family. The arrival of the youngest Middleton, James, established a minidynasty at the school that was not always entirely viewed with uncritical adoration. One mother of a girl in Kate’s house told Tatler magazine: “There was always something slightly galling about having your child at school with the Middletons. It made other families feel rather hopeless.”
Having achieved high marks, with “A” grades in Mathematics and Art and a “B” in English, the time had come for Kate to decide on her university options. Initially, Kate considered Edinburgh University. But for reasons that are still being debated, she changed her mind at the last minute. The decision would change her life, that of her family and friends, and ultimately the course of British monarchy history. Instead of rushing off to Edinburgh as planned, Kate decided on taking a gap year out, before starting at St Andrews University, on the north coast of Scotland. This ensured that when she returned to the United Kingdom and began her degree course, she would be at the same university, on the same course, and at the same time as one William Arthur Philip Louis Windsor—better known to the world as His Royal Highness, Prince William.
WAITY KATIE
The royal romance continued apace after the world saw William kissing Kate at the Swiss resort of Klosters. The gentleman’s agreement brokered between Clarence House, the official London residence of the Prince of Wales, and the British newspapers had been transgressed, however, and Charles and William were furious. However, the damage had been done. The press had a field day, unearthing details about Kate bit by bit, pressuring fellow students for juicy tidbits about the pair. Some students even reported being bribed with having their student loans paid off, in return for exclusive stories.
William and Kate now took their mutual passion for privacy to the next level. They rarely appeared in public together, and when they did so, they resolutely refused to so much as hold hands, let alone kiss or cuddle. Both of them knew this relationship needed air to breathe and grow, rather than be crushed at first bloom by the oppressive, relentless media spotlight. To that end, the pair retreated to the Royals’ rural idyll, Balgove House, on Strathtyrum, a sprawling private estate a quarter of a mile outside the town center, owned by Henry Cheape, a distant cousin of the Prince’s. While William’s protection officers were nearby in various small houses, the pair was pretty much left to their own devices unless they specially invited friends over—Pippa and James Middleton were frequent guests as were close friends from college.
Unlike William’s mother, Diana, Kate was eased gently into the hidebound world of the Royals. While Kate quickly had to adapt to being in the spotlight, after the headlines around the world following the press scoop at Klosters, she already enjoyed visiting Royal homes at Highgrove, Balmoral, and Sandringham, where she would often join in with shooting weekends, during the season. The Queen had also allowed William to use a Balmoral cottage, Tam-na-Ghar, during term time as a private retreat. There, Kate was becoming an increasingly familiar sight as she and William wandered the moors or took romantic walks along the river Dee. Most evenings, the pair would stay home, cooking a meal and cozying up in front of a roaring fire.
The circumstances were near-perfect. But barely a few months since the kiss at Klosters, cracks were beginning to appear in the couple’s relationship. Perhaps they had spent too much time together alone, perhaps they needed to both go through a period apart before proceeding further or simply—they each needed some time alone to process what was clearly a major and significant step for them both.
The pressure on the couple, both barely out of their teens, was immense. Since the world had gotten to know about the relationship, Kate and the Middleton family had come under the expected scrutiny in no time at all. Even at Buckingham Palace, some of the snootier of the Palace staff looked down on Kate’s self-made family and mocked their new money, their ambitious social climbing, and their relentless pursuit of status. Carole Middleton’s past came in for ribbing too, with some staff at the Palace making barbed comments about “setting cabin doors to manual” and “trolley dollies” when her name came up. If Kate was serious about William, this could turn the family upside down. Was she committed enough—and was he?
Ricocheting like a sparkling firework through both Princes’ teens and twenties was the boisterous and impish figure of Guy Pelly. Ever since their schooldays, where Pelly and William were classmates, he had been a source of mischief and fun, from buying porn for William at school, to encouraging and ably abetting wild drinking sprees. He was always up for a party and a prank. Now, as the 2004 summer holidays loomed, William announced to Kate that he and Guy would be taking a boys-only sailing holiday, with a few other friends and an all-girls sailing crew. Kate pursed her lips and accepted her boyfriend’s wish, wisely realizing that whatever William had to get out of his system, he might as well go off and get it out. Still, Kate felt a chilly displeasure toward Guy, according to a source. At the very least, she felt, he was a bad influence on the Prince.
Compounding Kate’s unhappiness, the sailing trip in Greece was to be preceded by a solo holiday in Nashville. William and some pals had accepted an invitation to visit the 360-acre family ranch of a friend studying at Edinburgh, the twenty-two-year-old heiress Anna Sloan. It was his chance to have fun in the sun with the rangy American, on whom, it is fair to say, he had a massive crush.
Friends have since claimed he was “head over heels” for Anna and was “desperate to woo her” on his Tennessee holiday, but Sloan turned him down. According to royal biographer Katie Nicholl in her book William and Harry, it was partially due to Prince William’s friendship with Sloan that Kate and William’s relationship hit the skids around this time, even though nothing—so William claimed—happened between the pair.
“Kate was beginning to question William’s commitment to their relationship, and she also had her own creeping doubts about their future after St Andrews,” wrote Nicholl. “A number of things had caused her to question William’s commitment, a
lthough she had not raised them with him yet.”
Kate’s suspicions that William was feeling frisky deepened when another girl popped up on the scene that summer. A member of the aristocracy with a sparkling personality, stunning looks, and part of one of Britain’s richest families, Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe was a shoo-in for the young Prince’s wandering attention. Sadly for William, she too felt that the life of a royal lover was not for her and she gently let him down, too.
While William was busy attempting to seduce girls in the United States and the United Kingdom, Kate joined housemate Fergus Boyd for a family holiday at the Boyds’ house in the French region of the Dordogne with some college friends. Kate had not confided in her pals about the extent of her and William’s troubles, until one night, after a few glasses of wine, she most uncharacteristically poured her heart out to the gang. “She got quite drunk on white wine and really let her guard down,” said one of those present. “She was debating whether or not she should text or call him. She said how sad she was and how much she was missing William—but she never mentioned it after that.”
That November, William and Kate reunited at college, but there was still a distance between them, even as they continued to share their house. The tensions that had surfaced that summer were still in the air, and the couple was struggling to decide how they should move forward, especially after they graduated the following summer. William didn’t help matters much by talking about how much he’d like to fly to Kenya to meet up with his old buddy Jecca Craig, which must have made Kate’s eyes roll yet again in frustration at her dithering boyfriend. At this stage, William seemed to simply not know what he wanted. It was here that Kate’s mother Carole stepped in with some sage advice, a family insider recalled, urging her daughter to give William a bit more space and allow him to come to terms with his feelings.
It worked. By Christmas 2004, William and Kate were officially back together, after some tough talking from a defiant Kate, said the source. William would stop making hopeful booty calls to the likes of Isabella and show that he was serious about Kate. Now, it was time for them both to knuckle down and prepare for their finals, in summer 2005.
To cement their reunion, William and Kate flew to Verbier, Switzerland, for a brief holiday with friends in January 2005. She and William enjoyed skiing and socializing with their pals. The abundance of kissing and canoodling between the two confirmed beyond doubt that things were definitely back on track.
In March 2005, there was more skiing when Charles invited Kate to Klosters again. This time it was for a holiday that served as a prewedding break for the happy Prince of Wales, who on April 9 would finally marry the love of his life, Camilla Parker Bowles. Everyone around Charles, not least his sons, were delighted for the old man, who was clearly thrilled to be making an honest woman of the person who had been such a major part of his life for decades. There had been some talk of the holiday being a lad’s only affair, but given their recent reconciliation and the prospect of looming finals, Charles knew it would make William happy to have Kate along.
The trip was a success. Kate and Charles bonded easily and warmly, and Kate’s natural sportiness and game attitude ensured that she fit into the group from the outset. Charles found himself liking her more and more. Clearly, had William been looking for paternal approval for his girlfriend, he would have been pleased with his dad’s enthusiastic reaction. Kate and William had learned the lesson of the previous year and made a point of avoiding PDA where possible, and instead adeptly fended off stories about their recent time apart with smooth rebuttal. In fact, the only downer of the whole trip was when Charles, irritated at the obligatory press call, was overheard making exceedingly uncomplimentary remarks about the BBC’s royal correspondent, Nicholas Witchell, which were spread widely and caused more than a few red faces among the royal party.
William invited Kate along to the party, but she kept a respectful distance from the intimate family ceremony, by mutual consent. William was thrilled with his new stepmother, with whom he had built a warm relationship over the years, unimaginable at one time when their mother portrayed her as a homewrecking witch. While the family celebrated the formal addition of the newly ennobled Duchess of Cornwall, Kate was preparing for the imminent finals, which she and William were due to take in May that year. The four years of study, which had been a constant throughout their budding romance, their flourishing love, the arguments and splits, the happy evenings alone together, the uncertainty and anguish—all came to a head that month. Just before the exams started, they attended the annual May Ball, as tradition dictated. Kate, full of nerves, drank so much that Fergus Boyd had to step in and hoist her aloft and take her home, early in the evening, said one onlooker.
After a nail-biting few days, by May 25, the final exams were done, and William and Kate each breathed a huge sigh of relief. But like final-year students everywhere, they were also apprehensive about what the outside world had in store for them once they had graduated. Of course, in their case, the eyes of the world would be following their every move. For two control freaks, things had to be perfect. No pressure there, then.
On June 23, 2005, “William Wales” and Catherine Middleton graduated from St Andrews University, each gaining a 2:1 degree in Geography and History of Art, respectively. At the graduation ceremony, the Queen, Prince Philip, and Prince Charles and his new wife Camilla all turned up to watch William receive his degree. In the custom of the university, he and Kate received a tap on the head with a piece of cloth believed to have come from the breeches once worn by renowned Calvinist, reformer, and founder of the Presbyterian Church, John Knox. After they both had accepted their degrees and posed for photographs, University Vice Chancellor Brian Lang addressed the fresh graduates, ahead of their heading out into the world.
“You will have made lifelong friends and I say this every year to all new graduates: You may have met your husband or wife. We rely on you to go forth and multiply,” he said.
That day, a photograph, which has since been seen by millions worldwide, was snapped. It shows the couple, radiating happiness and joy, in the euphoric moments following their graduation ceremony. William, his hair thankfully still present and abundant, grins openly, while Kate nestles into her boyfriend, a broad smile radiating simultaneous relief and happiness, neither betraying any sign of anxiety about the turbulent years that lay ahead.
LEARNING TO FLY
Following graduation, twenty-two-year-old William undertook his first solo royal tour to New Zealand, where crowds turned out to see the handsome young graduate Prince, as he joined the country’s then-Prime Minister Helen Clark in commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II. He was accompanied by his old friend, Thomas van Straubenzee, and his private secretary, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton. Amid the formal events marking the solemn occasion, William found time to hang out with his beloved British Lions rugby team and explore some of the beautiful countryside of the nation he had last visited twenty-two years before, as a baby with his parents on his first-ever overseas jaunt.
When William’s trip was done, he flew to Mount Kenya, where he had arranged to meet Kate. Kate had been looking forward to seeing William away from St Andrews, from the London nightclub scene, and from the United Kingdom’s increasingly inquisitive press. In the shadow of Mount Kenya, at the exclusive Ngwesi ecolodge in the Mukogodo Hills, the couple reunited under a gibbous moon and reaffirmed their love for each other.
William was staying a month in Kenya, with friends, at Lewa Downs, the Craigs’ nature reserve where he had paid previous visits since his gap year. Any lingering reservations Kate had had about William’s relations with Jecca were put firmly to rest when the couple hung out with Jecca and her boyfriend, Hugh, during the month William worked on the ranch and reservation, putting his newly acquired geographical knowledge to good use. At the end of the stay, he spent two thousand pounds on hiring the lodge for a big group of friends for an exuberant blowout.
&nbs
p; The party flew back to the United Kingdom weary but glowing with the aftermath of a brilliantly stimulating month in the wilds of Africa. The couple’s paths were set to diverge. William, now an adult Royal with a schedule to match, had a packed diary of engagements and obligations. Kate had—well, not much, really. Her position was difficult. She had to find a job that would challenge and stimulate her but also be flexible enough to allow her to continue her relationship with William. Following in her parents’ footsteps, she attempted to start up an online children’s clothing line, which soon failed. However, her immediate problem was, inevitably, the media.
Kate was being virtually stalked around the clock by paparazzi, whether it was hanging out at Boujis nightclub with William, Harry, and the gang or shopping casually at Topshop, Peter Jones, or Miss Sixty. Shopping trips to the local Waitrose supermarket or department store with Carole became frenzied games of cat and mouse, as the pair dodged long-range lenses and persistent pressmen. Occupying the gray area between being a formal royal consort and a member of the public, Kate found the Palace offered protection only when she was physically with William. The rest of the time, she was left to fend for herself.
Matters came to a head on her twenty-fifth birthday, when her house was swamped with a media circus. Lawyers were instructed, and the press warned, to back off. But as shrewd as ever, Kate didn’t create enemies of the media. She knew that there was a very good possibility she would need to keep them on her side for many years to come.
In a rare exchange of events, Prince William had to follow in his younger brother’s footsteps when he applied for Sandhurst, since Harry was already there. Undertaking the RCB entrance process at the Westbury barracks in Wiltshire, William passed with distinction, ensuring his path to a career in the military was assured. Kate was at his side when he received his results and celebrated with him at the Purple nightclub in Chelsea. They let their hair down and caroused until the early hours.