Kate (13 page)

Whereas things between Rupert and Kate were pretty straightforward, being together was more complicated for William and Carley. As the first term drew to a close, Carley felt unable to continue, unsettled by the covertness of their relationship and also by William's inability to truly forget Arabella. And it wasn't just Arabella herself whom William appeared to be pining for. He missed his friends from home, weekends in Gloucestershire, and clubbing in London. Here, in the small town of St. Andrews, even though the press was generally respectful of his privacy, William found himself under the public gaze wherever he went. He was still rattled by the embarrassing furor when his uncle Edward's TV company, Ardent Productions, breached the media ban and tried to film him covertly during the first term, and he felt constantly spied upon. There were countless students—particularly ones from overseas—who would spend a fortune on new wardrobes and drink only at the most fashionable bars in the hope of spotting him and the well-meaning townspeople, who would stop and openly stare if they saw their future King bicycling to a lecture. Toward the end of the first term, William began
to have serious doubts about life as an undergraduate and vowed to talk to his father as soon as he returned home for the Christmas vacation.

But before any big decisions needed to be made, there were parties to enjoy, including the most talked about one of the term. Both William and Kate were part of a select group invited by the Scottish heiress Hermione Wemyss to her parents' castle in Fife for a charity promises-style auction and party. The atmosphere inside Wemyss Castle was “insane,” according to one guest: “There were van Dycks that had been sprayed with cobwebs.” Laura Warshauer recalled, “Everyone was dressed up as school kids, and it was a Harry Potter theme. Kate was adorable in a pink sweater with a white buttoned-down shirt, a baseball cap, and a little skirt.” Kate had volunteered her services as a girl Friday and lined up on the castle's grand staircase with the other “promises.” As Laura recalled, there was a tangible connection between William and Kate as she came down the stairs. “They really had eyes on each other that night and William, dressed in a sweeping cape, bid $300 for a date with Kate. They spent the rest of the night dancing together, and though it was very innocent and nothing happened, there were sparks.” At the end of the evening, Kate was driven back to the residence hall with William by his protection officer, but they went back to their respective rooms. The next morning, they both left St. Andrews—William giving Kate and Laura a lift to the airport—to return home for Christmas.

The holidays passed quickly. For Kate, it was a chance to recharge her batteries, catch up with her friends, get the gossip from Pippa and James as to the goings on at Marlborough, and spend a relaxing Christmas and New Year's Day with her
parents. For William, things were more turbulent, as he talked his future through with Prince Charles and his former housemaster at Eton College, Dr. Gailey. They listened carefully to William and concluded that quite apart from the problems associated with feeling hemmed in at St. Andrews, William was not being inspired by his history of art course of study. After much discussion—in which his father shared his own difficult experiences of adapting to undergraduate life at Cambridge, and his grandfather, Prince Philip, issued a characteristic warning to “knuckle down and not wimp out”—it was decided, in conjunction with the university administration, that William would return to St. Andrews in January 2002. He was to remain in Sallies, where he was actually happy and comfortable, but would switch to pure geography, a subject he had excelled in and enjoyed while at school and had already been studying at St. Andrews as part of the broader Scottish system. This seemed like a good compromise, and William felt decidedly more optimistic about his undergraduate days ahead.

Returning to St. Andrews at the end of January 2002, a couple of weeks after her twentieth birthday, Kate learned that she had been chosen as one of the models for the upcoming Don't Walk fashion show. Back in November, Kate—along with two of her close friends and another four hundred or so hopefuls—had auditioned for the charity show that was taking place at the end of March and was one of the most important fixtures in the St. Andrews calendar. A fellow student, Charlie Moretti, more used to directing serious plays and building atmospheric stage sets, had been “tasked with rebooting the fashion show,” the purpose of which was to raise money for charity—in 2002, for breast cancer and juvenile diabetes. Until now the show had been low key, with a bunch of students
getting donations from local shops and railroading their friends to model, but with his characteristic theatrical flair, Charlie had decided to change all this and stage a more upscale show. He approached local and national designers and, somewhat ambitiously, got the national press involved. “All they wanted to know was whether William was going to be there, but I wasn't allowed to say because of the media deal,” he recalled.

Kate passed the audition because of her natural good looks and fabulous figure, but she was also—as Andrew Sands, a member of the production team, testified—“in the right crowd,” able to “bring the rich play cats to the show.” There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the evening would have an edge if William were to attend, and though Charlie Moretti played water polo on the prince's team, they needed as many open avenues as possible. They all knew that Kate was as close to William as it got. Indeed, at the start of the second term, when it came to sorting out accommodations for the second year, William had asked Kate, Fergus, and Olivia Bleasdale to share a house with him—an invitation Kate had accepted. In the weeks leading up to the big night, there was much anticipation as to whether or not William would come.

Andrew Sands choreographed the show and decided who would walk down the runway: “The show was at the Student Union, which was very unglamorous. It's where the local disco The Bop was held. It was an uninspiring 1970s building. It was a blank canvas, and we created the mood we wanted. We had an uncomplicated central runway with tables around it. The top tables were closest to the catwalk and were offered to people in the show and sold out immediately. Kate was given a table, and she invited William and his good friend, Adam
England, along with some others. It raised an eyebrow that she had invited William and definitely caused a bit of a stir.” The price of the tickets was not prohibitive—between $23 and $38 each, with a table of up to ten people costing $300.

Preparations for the show were time-consuming, and Kate had to attend several rehearsals, during which she was taught to walk like a model, had her clothes fitted, and was paired up with appropriate runway partners, one of them being Fergus. Charlie had managed to secure donations from the fashion house Chloe, as well as some well-known French labels and some new, younger designers, among them Sophie McElligott and Charlotte Todd. Kate was given one of Charlotte's sheer skirts to wear, along with about eight other changes, from black underwear to more formal creations. This was a new world to Kate, but as Andrew Sands remembers, nothing was too much for her: “She was actually a great model, she put up with a lot of diva tantrums that always accompanied the show. She was always on time, smiley and polite, and wasn't diva-ish at all. She wasn't political and didn't try and befriend people on the committee, which plenty of others did. She was amazingly confident and didn't ask for huge amounts of guidance or fish for compliments. She wasn't nervous or panicky on the night, she was very self-contained.”

When it came to the evening itself, Sophie Butler, the local hairdresser who did Kate's hair for the show, was backstage with the models: “We worked really hard before the show. On the actual night, it was really just tonging and putting in the colored straw ribbons we braided into the hair, which I had bought from a florist. Backstage, Kate was with a few of her friends who were also in the show, and lots of Red Bull was being drunk, so it was all very excitable. I just remember her
being a lovely girl. She was happy to do anything and everything she was asked to do. She was so beautiful and natural, she did stand out and she really made an impression.”

And maybe it was because Kate knew William would be there, in the front row, that just before it was her turn to take center stage, she decided to dispose of the chunky knitwear she was supposed to be wearing over Charlotte Todd's see-through long skirt and instead, as Andrew Sands recalled, “hoisted the skirt up and made it a much better-looking dress, which she wore over her black underwear.” Whatever she did, it worked—as she shimmied down the runway, her long, curled hair braided with ribbons, her slender waist, washboard stomach, and toned legs visible through the sheer dress, William barely knew where to look. “Wow,” he whispered to a friend. “Kate's hot!”

The show was a huge success and the mood was upbeat at the various after-parties, the first—for all those involved in the show—at the West Port and then a series of more-exclusive house parties around town. Both Kate and William ended up at the same party at 14 Hope Street, where, according to Andrew Sands, “They kissed at the end of the night. They were both standing up in the corner of the living room, and I recall seeing them out of the corner of my eye. It was dark, there were lots of people, and the music was playing very loud. Everyone pretended that they weren't taking much notice, but it went round St. Andrews like wildfire afterwards. It wasn't cool to make a big deal of it, you couldn't be seen to be acting like he was different from anyone else, but word got around.”

Other people at the party report that Kate was seen pulling away as William leaned in to kiss her. She may have been momentarily concerned that anything more intimate than their
already close friendship might muddy the waters when it came to living together. There was also the matter of Rupert, although her relationship with him had cooled over the Christmas vacation. But whatever the nature of the advance, this was the moment that seemed to mark a shift in their relationship, the possibility of something stirring. As Charlie Moretti concluded, “I think the fashion show made them the couple they are today. . . . I was always certain they would be together and maybe the fashion show was the crystallizing moment.”

A few days later, on March 30, 2002, the Queen Mother died at the great age of 101, and William, who was extremely fond of his great-grandmother, returned to London to be with his family. The Queen Mother had links with the university—Queen's College was named in her honor, and in 1929, 72 years before William took his place there, she had been awarded an honorary degree of doctor of laws. In fact, the Queen Mother had sent William off with the immortal words, “If there are any good parties, invite me down.” As William fondly recalled, “I said yes, but there was no way. I knew full well she would dance me under the table.” It was a sad time for Queen Elizabeth II and her family—just seven weeks earlier, Princess Margaret had passed away: the death of both her mother and sister, in this, the year of her Golden Jubilee. Kate, along with the rest of the nation, was touched by the sight of William and Harry walking behind their great-grandmother's coffin from Westminster Abbey, with echoes of the pain of their mother's death etched on their faces.

Back at St. Andrews at the beginning of the summer term, William and Kate settled back into lectures, and Kate found herself socializing more and more with William's close circle, with intimate and increasingly intricate dinner parties being
a favorite evening source of entertainment. Wanting to earn some extra money to fund her summer vacation, Kate secured herself a job at The Doll's House Restaurant, a popular bistro in town. Michael Choong took a friend and her parents there. “It was a cute little place in town. There weren't that many places to go out and The Doll's House was lovely. It had rustic wooden painted furniture decorated with dolls and doll's house furniture. We had a picture taken with Kate while she was working there. She wore jeans and a dark shirt and a black apron. It was a bit awkward having her wait on us, but she was very friendly and smiley and just got on with it.” By now she had a close group of female friends, with whom she would spend her time. Among them was Olivia Bleasdale and Fergus's girlfriend, Sandrine Janet; Lady Virginia “Ginny” Fraser, the daughter of Lord Strathalmond, who knew Kate from her former school, Downe House; Mel Nicholson, who was dating Oli Baker; and Bryony Gordon who was studying geography with William. By now, Kate's relationship with Rupert had fizzled out. He was graduating at the end of the year, and they both knew, deep in their hearts, that their relationship was over. With William waiting on the sidelines, Rupert never really stood a chance.

As the undergraduate exams came to an end and the students were able to set aside their studies for the balls and festivities to mark the end of the academic year, Kate reflected on her first year at the university. As she packed up her room in Sallies, she looked at the photographs that told the story of the past ten months at St. Andrews and wondered what she would add during her second year. Living in the same house as William would, she knew, require the utmost discretion, so any photographs of life inside 13 Hope Street would have to
be kept privately. She knew that there would be other restrictions on her freedom—much more than the Sponsio Academica or the confidentiality agreement required. But these were sacrifices Kate was prepared to make. William was by now one of her best friends. As she said good-bye to him and her other close friends and flew home for the summer, little did she suspect just how adventurous her second year would turn out to be.

CHAPTER 6

The Bubble Bursts