The cottage, set in rolling grounds brimming with orchids and fuschia bushes, was an idyllic venue for the prince to woo his girl. Not only was the house discreet, but it was also totally secure. By the time the royal party moved in, a £1.5 million operation had swung into action in order to prevent another humiliating breach of security in the aftermath of the gatecrashing of William’s 21st birthday. A neighbouring cottage was chosen as the centre of a security operation, and squads of officers were drafted in to keep 24-hour surveillance on the farmhouse. The cottage was also bombproofed and CCTV cameras and panic buttons installed, linked to both local police stations and Buckingham Palace in case of an emergency.
The increased privacy and freedom of their new, more rural home gave William and Kate the opportunity to begin their burgeoning relationship away from prying eyes, a rarity for members of the royal family, especially the young prince. When confirmation that they were a couple came, initial reports claimed that they had been going out since Christmas, although there have been suggestions that they began dating the previous summer, around the time of their birthday celebrations.
Either way, the young couple behaved with the utmost care in their public dealings with one another in an elaborate effort to keep their romance secret. Apparently, they had a pact not to show any affection towards each other in public, leaving the house separately in the mornings and never holding hands if they were out and about. They kept the nature of their relationship completely hidden from the outside world by having romantic evenings at home, trysts at Birkhall (a 14-bedroom mansion on the banks of the River Muick near Balmoral, inherited from the Queen Mother by Prince Charles) and weekends at Highgrove, where Kate met her boyfriend’s father for the first time. The couple would drive down in his black VW Golf for weekends hunting and shooting.
The first hint that their relationship had changed pace came a few weeks before their skiing holiday, when they went riding with the Middleton Hunt in North yorkshire, and William introduced Kate to his friends as his ‘girlfriend’. Within weeks, it was common knowledge that they were together.
When William and Kate returned from Switzerland, it was business as usual, despite the fact that their relationship was now in the public eye. True to form, they remained holed up in their country farmhouse, rarely venturing out unless they could ensure their privacy.
Indeed, they were more cautious than ever. Whereas the previous year Kate had watched from the touchline as William played in the town’s annual seven-a-side rugby tournament, in 2004 she kept a lower profile and did not turn out to watch him play for their old local, the West Port Bar, one of a dozen sides competing in the tournament. Hundreds of students and members of the public had come to see the matches, organised by St Andrews publicans, and no doubt more particularly to watch the prince, in his number 4 shirt, limber up and play alongside his housemate Fergus Boyd. Brought on as a substitute, he took a couple of hard tackles and dragged down one of his opponents in pursuit of the ball, but the team still lost two of their three matches. It was only during the evening, at the post-tournament party in the St Andrews Golf Hotel, that Kate turned up to commiserate with her boyfriend. The couple kissed in public for the first time, but there wasn’t a photographer in sight.
A few weeks later, William and Kate donned evening attire for the annual May Ball, held again at Kinkell Farm, which that year had a Saints and Sinners theme. As in the previous year, the royal couple had a VIP pass for the charity do so that they could avoid the riffraff. ‘William was given an access-all-areas pass for security reasons,’ the Kate Kennedy Club president, Alex Walsh, admitted.
The couple’s discretion was quite extraordinary. Society photographer Zygmunt Sikorski-Mazur, a former solicitor, shot William’s inner circle for society magazines such as Tatler and Harpers & Queen. He snapped their flatmate Fergus Boyd and close friends olivia Bleasdale and Bryony Daniels but never managed to photograph the couple. ‘They were an engaging bunch,’ reveals Zygmunt, 60. ‘They were always very friendly and helpful to me in my photographic work. As with any young people in the same situation, there were plenty of high jinks, but they always seemed to know when there was a line which should not be crossed. They were almost without exception very well-brought-up children from some of the most well-to-do families in the country.
‘It’s amazing when I think back that I was never able to photograph Kate, let alone William. It wasn’t that they were deliberately obstructive. I just think they had a very good intelligence network and wanted to keep their lives at the university behind a veil of discretion for the most part.
‘To get permission to shoot some of the events, like the big balls, would take weeks of negotiating and it was obviously no secret that the press would be at these events. That meant William and Kate would give them a wide berth. But I often heard that they would appear at events that I didn’t go to or they’d turn up quite late, after I had left the scene.
‘I did see the pair of them once, together with Fergus, enjoying a drink in one of the town-centre pubs, ironically where I had arranged to meet a reporter before the pair of us went on to the autumn ball in 2004. The three of them looked just like any other students, as they sat quietly sipping away, deeply engrossed in a discussion, no doubt about their coursework. Not surprisingly they didn’t show at the evening event.’
Jules Knight, who studied history and moral philosophy with William and lived next door to Kate and William in the second year, was a member of that inner circle. ‘Will and I weren’t known for being studious,’ he said later in an interview with the Daily Mail. ‘We were the only ones on the moral philosophy course and would play noughts and crosses during lectures and take the mickey out of each other.
‘I remember he threw a party at his house and the fire alarm went off. Will had to switch off the power to stop it and in doing so he switched off the secret cameras. Suddenly, we were surrounded by security guards.’
Jules, who is now a member of the classical-music group Blake, helped organise that year’s May Ball, and was also a friend of Kate’s. ‘Kate’s a sweet, unassuming kind of girl,’ he added. ‘I don’t think any of us knew she would become one of the most photographed women in the world . . . Kate never claimed to be royalty – she was just a normal girl.’ He also pointed out: ‘We were all in a safe bubble at St Andrews. There was no intrusion. Kate and Will could go for a drink and hold hands and no one batted an eyelid.’
The May Ball was the final hurrah before the students had to knuckle down to their exams, which began on 17 May 2004. Within weeks, it was the summer holidays, which were kicked off when the love-struck couple dressed up as Rhett Butler and Scarlett o’Hara, the star-crossed lovers in Gone with the Wind, for a fancy-dress party thrown by a fellow student.
Hardly had William and Kate’s relationship begun to flourish, before speculation began to mount that it was on the rocks, sparked by rumours in royal circles that the prince was planning to spend the summer in Africa visiting his teenage sweetheart Jecca Craig rather than going on a romantic break with his girlfriend. In the end, Kate apparently won what the tabloids christened ‘the Battle of the Babes’ when William decided not to visit Lewa Downs, the Craigs’ game reserve in the foothills of northern Kenya, for the first time in three years. Whether he had ever been seriously planning to take the trip we cannot know. Certainly, William, like his father, usually does what he wants and would be unlikely to change his mind due to pressure from either the media or his girlfriend.
Towards the end of July, William and Kate flew out in a party of eight friends to the sun-kissed island of Rodrigues. Known as the Cinderella of the Mascarene Islands, the tiny, peaceful volcanic island is surrounded by beautiful coral reefs and charming lagoons. Only 11 miles by 5 miles across, it has many deserted beaches and forests that are home to the rare golden bat. The prince had first visited it during his gap year. Now, four years later, he returned with the girl who had captured his heart. The couple stayed in a £25-a-night gues
thouse, where they retired early and got up early. While Kate lapped up the sunshine, William donned a wetsuit to go scuba diving in the sea and snorkelling in the clear blue waters and rode a hired motorbike along the coastline.
It was the first time that William and Kate had spent a summer holiday together, a rite of passage in any new relationship. The fact that they chose to go away in a group, rather than as a twosome, led to suggestions that William was not as keen on Kate as she was on him. However, it is not uncommon for students – especially those who can afford more than one holiday – to go away in groups.
Within days of arriving back home, the two were separated when William flew out to Nashville to stay with American heiress Anna Sloan, who is supposedly the only girl ever to have turned down a date with the second in line to the throne. Whether he went with Kate’s blessing can only be guessed at, but certainly she put a brave face on increasing speculation that their relationship was in trouble.
Anna, who was studying at Edinburgh University, is the daughter of the late lawyer and businessman George Sloan. A champion amateur jockey who competed in the Grand National in 1969, he died in 2001 at the age of 62 after shooting himself in a tragic accident on the family’s 360-acre estate. A keen horsewoman herself, Anna is believed to have bonded with the prince over their shared experience of losing a parent. She had invited him to visit the sprawling family home, complete with swimming pool, set in the rolling hills of Tennessee. William was amongst 15 companions who spent a week in the village of Leipers Fork, but Kate is not believed to have been invited.
During the holiday, William became something of a tourist attraction, despite the region being known as the Hollywood of the South and William’s zeal for guarding his privacy. Locals spotted him everywhere he went: shopping in the trendy store Abercrombie & Fitch, having pancakes, bacon and eggs for breakfast at the Country Boy diner and buying beer from Puckett’s Grocery Store. ‘He had a couple of friends with him and just looked like an ordinary fellow,’ owner Billy Raynor told reporters. ‘I said to him, “Are you sure you’re going to drink all that?” They just laughed and said they’d be all right. There was a young kid working here who was wearing the same shirt as him and William commented on that. He paid his bill in cash and then they just drove off.’
The group of friends also dined at Sperry’s, a restaurant in Nashville decorated with prints of English fox hunts and coats of arms, where they got through more than 12 bottles of house wine, splitting the £330 bill at the end of the meal. The prince caused quite a stir and diners gawped as he munched his way through a filet mignon wrapped in bacon and stuffed with blue cheese, accompanied by creamed spinach. ‘There was a constant stream of people going to the bathroom so they could walk by him,’ recalled barmaid LuAnn Reid. ‘Patrons were phoning their daughters and granddaughters so they could come in and see him. So many girls started coming in that Sperry’s turned into a teen scene for a bit.’
While her boyfriend was enjoying himself in America, Kate kept her head down and ignored the gossip about his flirtations with other women. She didn’t have much choice if she wanted to date the globetrotting prince.
When William returned from the States, he is reported to have whisked his long-suffering girlfriend off on a romantic break to the Birkhall estate. They had spent many weekends there before, but this is believed to have been the first time that Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles were also in residence.
The Highland break was deemed to be Kate’s compensation for yet another enforced separation before the couple returned to St Andrews. She was reported to have been unhappy when her boyfriend jetted off again with six of his male friends for a break in the Mediterranean, staying on a luxury yacht owned by the Latsis family. It was William’s fourth summer holiday in as many months, but, needless to say, Kate had little choice in the matter. She was not invited on the five-day boys-only cruise around the Ionian islands, for which William reputedly hired an all-female crew, a move that could be seen as calculated to put Kate’s nose out of joint. However, the prince may simply have been creating a smokescreen, being careful to keep his relationship with Kate out of the public eye.
Chapter 18
Graduates at Last
Sitting casually on Prince William’s knee during lunch on holiday in Klosters, Kate Middleton could not have found a more effective way of dispelling rumours that their romance was foundering. Engaging in friendly, relaxed conversation with Prince Charles – and laughing and joking with Prince Harry – she effectively showed the world that her relationship with his elder son had his family’s all-important approval.
It was 30 March 2005, almost a year since Kate and William had inadvertently allowed themselves to be photographed together on a ski lift in the Swiss resort, exposing their love affair to public scrutiny for the first time. Now, after a mountain of speculation about their future had accumulated, the publicity-shy couple were being openly affectionate, proving at a stroke that their relationship was still on course.
Kate’s presence on the family holiday seemed to be a sign that their relationship was becoming more serious and the strongest indication yet that they were not planning to go their separate ways after university.
The pretty Swiss village of Klosters, five miles from Davos and an hour-and-a-half’s drive from Zurich airport, is the ski resort of choice for the royal family. Its main cable car, which runs to the top of Gotschnagrat, has been christened ‘the Prince of Wales’. Charles has been skiing at the resort since his marriage to Princess Diana in 1981. The resort holds sad memories for the royal family. It was there that the Queen’s equerry Major Hugh Lindsay lost his life in March 1988, after being buried by an avalanche. On that holiday, Prince Charles was also accompanied by Charles Palmer-Tomkinson, a former olympic skier who had coached him in his younger days, and his wife Patty, who was airlifted to hospital in Davos with Major Lindsay after sustaining leg injuries.
On this trip, though, Charles was surely looking to the future rather than the past as he spent his final week as a bachelor skiing with his two sons, having chosen to visit the resort before his marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles. The future Duchess of Cornwall, who is scared of heights and has never learned to ski, remained in England, putting the final touches to their wedding plans.
While Kate was in the royal party, Harry’s then girlfriend Chelsy Davy had turned down the chance to join them, preferring to stay in South Africa. In her place, Harry invited close friend Guy Pelly, who had been unfairly pilloried in the past for supposedly leading the young royal astray. On the first day of the trip, Kate, then 23, proved just how comfortable she was with the royal family, sitting next to Prince Charles at lunch, chatting happily with him throughout the day and sharing a cable-car carriage with him. It was the first time the history of art student had been photographed with the heir to the throne, but she seemed to take it all in her stride, showing a maturity beyond her years.
Despite their obvious ease in each other’s company, Kate and William, who had made great efforts to hide their romance during their third year at university, tried to keep their distance in public. At one point, William was seen walking some distance ahead of his girlfriend, who followed behind with other members of their party, the couple perhaps deliberately avoiding spending every minute together in front of the press and paparazzi.
That night, the group spent the evening at the Casa Antica, Princess Diana’s favourite nightclub. It was there that the Princess of Wales had earned the nickname ‘the Disco Queen of Klosters’. While William and Harry drank bottles of beer and danced, their exhibitionist friend Guy stripped down to his silk boxer shorts and ran around the room. The atmosphere was so relaxed that William gave an impromptu interview to the royal correspondent of The Sun, uttering words that haunted him for many years afterwards. When asked about marriage to his girlfriend, the blushing prince retorted: ‘Look, I’m only 22, for God’s sake. I’m too young to marry at my age. I don’t want to get married until I’m
at least 28 or maybe 30.’
However, both William’s and Guy’s actions were overshadowed the following day by a photocall on the slopes during which Prince Charles showed that he could be every bit as gaffe-prone as his father. Without realising that he could be heard through the microphones at their feet in the snow, he moaned to his sons: ‘I hate doing this,’ before insulting the BBC’s royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell, saying: ‘I can’t bear that man. I mean, he’s so awful, he really is.’
His comments proved a PR nightmare for the prince’s aides. The forthcoming wedding had already been dogged by a series of criticisms and controversies over the choice of venue, the legality of the civil ceremony, the decision by the Queen not to attend and the role of Camilla when Charles succeeded as King. They had called a press conference in order to redress the balance of adverse publicity, and Witchell had asked an innocuous question about how the princes felt about the marriage. Unfortunately, William’s reply – ‘Very happy, very pleased. It will be a good day.’ – was followed by his father’s comments about the BBC reporter. The journalists who witnessed the heir to the throne’s outburst attributed it to his irritation with the press in general over paparazzi photographs of Kate and William taken the day before, which he saw as a breach of their agreement to give the prince privacy during his university years. Charles is also believed to have a dislike of Witchell stemming from a broadcast in which he compared the Prince of Wales’s extravagant holidays to those of his great-uncle Edward, Duke of Windsor, an obituary of Princess Margaret written by him and a report on Prince Harry taking drugs.
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