Kate (14 page)

D
URING THE SUMMER
vacation, while Kate was working as a waitress at the Henley Royal Regatta and William was undertaking official royal engagements, back in St. Andrews, Apartment A at 13 Hope Street was undergoing radical internal redecoration. The well-maintained two-story, top-floor apartment was being fitted with bulletproof windows, a bombproof front door, a state-of-the-art laser security system, and floor-to-ceiling reinforced pine shutters. At the same time, Special Branch officers were informing residents of the quiet street that come the start of the academic year, new tenants were moving in and there would be increased security—and an initial flurry of activity—in their neighborhood.

And so, in September 2002, just before the beginning of their second year, William, Fergus, Kate, and Olivia returned to St. Andrews to settle into their new home. William's room, situated on the first floor between the galley kitchen and the
high-ceilinged living-dining room, was the largest of the bedrooms and looked out onto the wild garden and the back of the Student Union on Market Street. Kate had a smaller bedroom, which she personalized with her usual flair—photographs taking pride of place. With its open-plan living area, the apartment was ideal for entertaining, and the quartet soon established themselves as great dinner party hosts—Kate and Olivia mostly responsible for the cooking and William and Fergus, the shopping.

Now that they were free from the regimen of eating in the university hall, it wasn't long before dinner parties became the craze among Kate's social set. The local Tesco grocery store had never seen anything like it and had become a locus of great excitement, a frisson of expectation in the aisles, buzzing with students and local people, who, at certain times of the week, “shopped to spot the prince.” Dressed in his characteristic different shades of cream and white, Fergus stood out wherever he went, and if Fergus was browsing, shoppers could be pretty sure William was not far behind him. Andrew Sands remembered, “Tesco's was a bit of meeting place, and people would get seriously dressed up to go there. It's where the great and the good met up, often while they were buying groceries for that night's dinner party.”

As the early evenings closed in and the weather turned, the apartment mates fell into the rhythm of term routine. William and Kate discovered that they were content to spend much of their free time in each other's company. After a morning swim or run, they would go off to their different faculties but return home as soon as they could to catch up. Studying was an important part of Kate's daily routine, and she rarely missed a lecture in either the core subjects of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century history of art or the new courses on offer to second-year students. She had chosen to take a course in the history of photography, which enthralled her. While she maintained her flawless attendance, she would hurry back to study in the apartment or relax with William, spending the long evenings listening to music or watching films, occasionally venturing out for a drink at the West Port or Ma Bells. Discovering just how compatible they were, just how much they had in common, and all they had to talk about came as a surprise to them both, and as their friendship deepened, something shifted, and within a few months things began to fall quietly into place.

Of course, where William was concerned, this was not exactly straightforward: though he was enjoying a freedom that no royal before him had ever had, the tricky business of living a normal life while being in line to the throne continued to be difficult to navigate. Nothing illustrated this more in that autumn semester than the sudden collapse of Paul Burrell's trial in November 2002. Princess Diana's former butler had been accused of stealing over three hundred items from the estate of the Prince and Princess of Wales, but during the trial, an astonishing and unexpected out-of-court intervention from the Queen meant that the case against him no longer stood. William was as shocked as anyone when this happened, not knowing what to think of the man with whom he, his mother, and his brother had once been so close. Through all this, Kate was there to support William—especially during the unpleasant aftermath of revelations and counteraccusations, all played out in the frenzy of the media.

It was around this time that journalists thought they had spotted a new woman in William's life. He had recently started
walking to the library and lectures with fellow geography student Bryony Daniels. Tall, with waist-length hair, she was extremely attractive, and the fact that the media assumed she was William's new girlfriend was no bad thing for the prince. “She was the cover for a long time because she was often seen with William and they were photographed walking together in town. He let the press think that she was his girlfriend because it was the perfect ruse,” explained one student. “Bryony used to cut out the press clippings about them being an item and put them on the fridge. It was very convenient for William, but I think there was a bit of Bryony that wished they were dating.”

Kate needed no warning that any obviously romantic connection to William would be seized upon by the press and that their bourgeoning relationship had to remain beneath the radar. And so, while life inside 13 Hope Street was changing for both of them, they made sure that they were rarely seen together in public. Charlie Moretti recalled that they would never hold hands while walking on campus as many of the students did. “They had some lectures together, so you would see them on campus, but they were never openly affectionate. They were never touchy or feely in public.” According to Kate's lecturer and head of the History of Art Department, Professor Peter Humfrey, none of the lecturers knew that the couple had become close, and even on campus, Kate kept her head down. “She was extremely discreet, she wasn't the type to make a big show, she was very quiet and in retrospect I can see that it was perhaps a deliberate policy.” Kate kept busy, and together with her friend Katherine Munsey and other second-year students, she got involved with the Lumsden Club, a group set up to rival the long-established, archaic,
all-male Kate Kennedy Club. Andrew Sands observed the group at close quarters, full of admiration for Kate's dedication to its charitable aims: “She spent a lot of time with the girls from the club. Kate was one of the key figures in it. They organized charity events, including a garden party in the summer that became one of the things to go to. That went down well because it was all very much in good spirit—their opening event was huge, and they raised loads of money. The idea was that everyone bought a ticket and brought a toy to the event that would be sent off to a hospital or an orphanage.” Between this, her studies, part-time work at The Doll's House, and hockey practice, Kate's life—on the outside at least—continued as usual.

However, though there may not have been a whole lot of difference in Kate's routine and activities, her close friends noticed a change in her behavior. Never having been one to party hard, Kate was nevertheless sociable and outgoing and in the previous year had spent a lot of time out and about with Rupert and her friends. Now, here she was going straight home after lectures or hockey practice and more often than not staying in for the entire evening. For William, the domesticated routine of living with his apartment mates—shopping, cooking supper, watching a movie, listening to music, even doing the housework—was exactly the normality he craved. This must have been bliss for Kate, the man she was falling in love with, wanting nothing more than a quiet night at home, no external distractions, night after night.

Dinner parties were a good way of socializing and enjoying each other's company without having to go out into town and risk being spotted together. Katherine Munsey, a mutual friend of Kate and William, was considered to be the queen
of entertaining, astonishing her guests with a fine attention to detail: “She would go to extreme efforts and had the silver brought up from London when she was throwing a really big event,” remembered Andrew Sands. “She was very stylish and so were her dinner parties, which would consist of courses and courses. They would take it in turns to host at each other's houses, which always entailed lots of drinking and lots of fun.”

At Hope Street, Kate was in charge of the cooking and occasionally William attempted to make a dish, but as Kate recalled some years later, she was often required to come to the rescue when the meal risked being spoiled: “I would have to wander in and save something that was going.”

One thing William could be relied on for was supplying copious bottles of Jack Daniel's for the popular after-dinner drinking games, a favorite of which was called “I've Never.” This entailed one player admitting something he or she had never done and then asking the others if they had. Anyone assembled who had done the deed had to take a drink. One of their friends recalled, “William and Kate loved the game, but it went a bit wrong on one occasion when Carley came for dinner. She and William were still friends, and she lived across the road in Howard Place. She could literally wave to William from her sitting room, where she would sit knitting by the window, which rather grated on Kate. When it was Carley's turn to play, she announced, ‘I've never dated two people in this room,' knowing full well that William was the only one who had, because Kate was sitting next to him. He shot Carley a thunderous look and said under his breath, ‘I can't believe you just said that' before drinking his shot. Kate didn't speak to Carley much after that, but we were in shock. We knew they
were together, but it was the first time William confirmed his and Kate's relationship.”

A few weeks later, in the middle of November, William invited Kate—along with fifteen other friends, including Olivia Bleasdale and Ginny Fraser—to a shooting weekend at Wood Farm in Sandringham. Crammed into a six-bedroom cottage, Kate got her first taste of one of William's regular shoots and the advantages of being across the estate from Prince Charles, who sent over a home-cooked meal for them. This was to be the first of many such weekends, Kate having to get used to the routine of the shoot and the braces of pheasants hanging around the kitchen waiting to be cooked and eaten.

The rest of the second year passed gently by, both Kate and William busy with their coursework and summer-term exams. To the astute observer, there were glimpses of something developing between them—they were seen lying side by side in the spring sunshine during the breaks in a rugby match in which William was playing; they danced together at the Kate Kennedy Club annual May Ball—but they managed to keep the depth of their relationship under wraps. Some of their friends knew the true state of affairs, of course, and others had suspicions—but crucially, the public had no idea.

Ever alert, however, the press thought that something might be up. William and Kate had been spotted walking to lectures together, and the media suspected that Kate was too pretty to be just a friend. When William attended her belated twenty-first birthday celebration in June 2003, a reporter door-stepped her father, Michael, and asked him what he knew about their relationship. He was politely evasive: “We are very amused at the thought of being in-laws to Prince William,
but I don't think it's going to happen.” Kate had told her parents that she was growing close to William, and she also confided in her sister, but she swore them all to secrecy, insisting nobody was to utter a word to anyone else. The relationship hadn't fully developed, and she didn't want anything to upset this delicate early stage.

Carole had pulled out all the stops for Kate's party, renting a large tent for the garden and hiring caterers to help prepare a sit-down dinner for family and friends. The occasion was nearly overshadowed when Ginny Fraser, one of Kate's St. Andrews friends, sent out invitations to her own twenty-first party on the same date, causing a headache for members of their clique, who were put in the uncomfortable position of having to choose whose party to attend. According to one of their friends, “It caused a real divide and a bit of a social rift. Kate was very upset, as she had sent her invitations out first and invited Ginny. She cut Ginny off a bit after that.”

Among their St. Andrews friends, twenty-first celebrations were big occasions. Kate and William were still talking about Meghann Gunderman's lavish party, which had been held at a Scottish castle and was rumored to have cost $150,000. The party had a Gone with the Wind theme, and, a fan of fancy dress, Kate had decided to make her party 1920s themed. Although some of her friends elected to go to Ginny's party over hers, William promised Kate he would be there to celebrate with her, and when his Volkswagen Golf crunched up the gravel driveway, followed closely by his security team, Kate's heart leaped. Her parents had treated her to a flapper-style cocktail dress, and she looked incredible, having spent the day preparing for the party with Pippa and Carole.

Not wishing to draw attention to his belated arrival, Kate discreetly slipped out of the cocktail reception to greet William at the front door, where she introduced him for the first time to her parents. Dressed in a smoking jacket and with his hair slicked down in a nod to the theme of the night, he quickly got into the swing of the party. Glasses of Pimm's and lemonade and flutes of champagne were served on the lawn before supper, where William was seated at Kate's table. According to one guest there that night, “There were lots of Marlburians as well as St. Andrews friends, but there was quite an overlap. Lots of them knew each other, and William knew quite a few people there, which made it very relaxed. We all gave him his privacy, and he kept himself to himself. It was a sit-down dinner and dance, and William looked very dapper; he seemed to be having a lot of fun—we all were.”