Kate (7 page)

Kate missed out on the nocturnal bonding and banter in the dormitories. She arrived in time for assembly, and then it was straight into lessons. Even by the time she got to class, she found that many of the girls had already paired up with their best friends. Compared to the curriculum at St. Andrew's, the lessons were hard, and she struggled to keep up with her peers academically. Even when it came to sports, where she should have excelled, Kate found she was out of her league. The predominant game at Downe House was lacrosse, which she had never played, and there was no hockey on the curriculum. According to her headmistress, Susan Cameron, who gave an interview to the
Mail on Sunday
, “She was not selected for the school teams during her time with us, which, given that she was very sporty at her last school, was slightly unusual. Kate may have felt slightly out of things because people at that level would have been well into lacrosse, and I think she probably had never played. It strikes me that could have been a crushing disappointment. You pick up a lacrosse stick and think you're good at games, then someone says to you, ‘That's not how you pick up a lacrosse stick,' and you feel rather squashed. It's a delicate age.”

Disappointed not to be part of a team on the sports field and shy compared to some of her more outgoing classmates, Kate retreated into her shell. She found the all-girl environment alienating and had little in common with many of the
wealthy pupils who owned ponies and came from high-society families. Others, like former pupil Emma Sayle, came from precocious private London schools. There was a hierarchy in place, and according to Emma, you were judged on your class, your background, and how pretty you were. Socially forward girls seemed to have the advantage, as did those who were more developed. Some of the older girls had experimented with alcohol, some had boyfriends, and others were already secretly smoking, but not Kate, who by nature was not transgressive. As her former teacher Mr. Boyd recalled, “Catherine had no interest in boys. She was always very innocent.” At Downe House, her naïveté and natural kindness made her a target, and she was picked on. “There was a group in our year called the ‘London Trendies,'” said Emma, who became friends with Kate years later when they took part in a charity boat race together. “Kate just wouldn't have fitted in with that sort of thing. She also didn't know anyone, and I think she was very lonely.”

Word that Kate was struggling reached her old teachers at St. Andrew's. “We heard quite soon that Catherine wasn't happy at Downe House. It was talked about in the staff room,” recalled Mrs. Allford. “It seemed to be more a case of her not fitting in. She was very innocent and ordinary, and the other girls might have been more sophisticated. Catherine had always been sheltered and protected.” Mr. Boyd agreed: “I can see why she didn't settle into Downe House; she was an all-rounder and not just a straight-A student.”

Although she was desperately unhappy, the headmistress, Miss Cameron, who met with the Middletons several times, played down reports that Kate was badly bullied. “She may well have felt a fish out of water, or unhappily not in the right
place. Certainly I have no knowledge of any serious bullying at all. But there's what everyone calls bullying, and there's actual real, miserable bullying where someone has a dreadful time. That certainly didn't happen,” she said. “Yes, there would be teasing. It's all part of the normal competition of growing up, of establishing a pecking order. Girls are cliquey by nature and they can be rather cruel. If you're attractive, too, that can be seen as rather a threat. They can sense those who are slightly weaker or who haven't shown their strengths yet, and it's those girls who are likely to end up being picked on or teased. I think it's fair to say she was unsettled and not particularly happy. Maybe in Catherine's case she just kind of went quiet and didn't say anything.”

Kate's experience wasn't unique. Some of her friends from St. Andrew's Prep also found the transition of moving to secondary school challenging. “I can totally imagine why Kate had a hard time at Downe House,” said Andrew Alexander, who went to Bradfield College. “We'd had such a lovely, innocent time at St. Andrew's Prep, and secondary school was very different. When I went to Bradfield College, I was stunned when I saw people smoking—it was drilled into us not to smoke. It was a shock. St. Andrew's was a complete bubble. Back then Kate wasn't gregarious or assertive, so I can see she might have struggled and didn't fit in. It felt like a rat race compared to the paradise of St. Andrew's.”

Not so far away, thirteen-year-old Prince William was also struggling to adjust to his new life at Eton College in Windsor. Whereas his parents—who had separated three years earlier—posed as a happy family outside Manor House, his boarding school, the public appearance, which was captured by no less than three hundred photographers, masked an unhappy
truth. The Wales's marriage was over, but their private lives were being relentlessly raked through in the tabloid press. Within William's first term, he had to deal with reports that his mother was having an affair with England's rugby player Will Carling and then a London-based art dealer, Oliver Hoare. He was mortified when Princess Diana gave a now-infamous interview to the BBC's
Panorama
, during which she lifted the lid on her marriage and revealed her husband's affair with his long-term mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, who was married to Andrew Parker Bowles at the time. “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” she told interviewer Martin Bashir. To William's horror, she also spoke candidly about her affair with former Life Guards officer James Hewitt, a family friend who had taught William and Harry to horse ride. Despite the college's best efforts to protect the prince, many of his peers watched the program, and for weeks, paparazzi lurked in the shadows of Windsor Castle, waiting to get a shot of William, who would head there at weekends to stay with his grandparents. It was a difficult start for the schoolboy prince.

William managed to settle in and find his feet, but Kate did not. She hated the name-calling and practical jokes, which were part of the school's rite of passage. Her father, Michael, who under duress had been “a fag” (servant to senior pupils) at Clifton College, remembered how testing school life could be. As a young pupil, Michael had to wait on the older prefects, and he was tasked with shining their shoes, cleaning their studies, and making cocoa, or he risked being punished. He urged his daughter to follow the family mantra and “grin and bear it,” but after a second term, it was apparent Downe House was not going to work.

As Pippa and James were still at St. Andrew's and Kate had been so happy there, Michael and Carole paid a visit to the headmaster, Jeremy Snow, for some advice. He suggested that Kate might be happier at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, with its national reputation for sports and academic excellence.

So after visiting Marlborough, the Middletons took their daughter out of Downe House. Leaving halfway through the academic year could have had repercussions on her school reports, but there was no other option, according to Mr. Acheson, “They did the right thing and pulled Catherine out when they realized she was unhappy. It was absolutely the right move. Marlborough was the right choice.” Being that it was an hour's drive from home, it was agreed that Kate would be a boarder, which meant Carole and Michael would only see her for weekends every fourth week.

Set on the edge of a historic market town where it dominates local life, Marlborough College is an impressive collection of original buildings scattered around the beautiful Wiltshire countryside. The school, considered to be one of the most promising coeducational establishments in the country, was founded in 1843 for the sons of Church of England clergymen. The $44,000-a-year college counts the poet Sir John Betjeman; singer Chris de Burgh to whom Kate is distantly related through her father; the Prime Minister's wife, Samantha Cameron; and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie as notable former alumni. Out of its fourteen boarding houses, it educates a total of 889 pupils from the ages of thirteen to eighteen, about two-thirds of them girls.

It was a warm spring morning in April 1996, the sun shining on what the Middletons hoped was an auspicious new
beginning. As Carole and Michael arrived at the school, they were characteristically optimistic and upbeat. Dressed in her new uniform of a dark green kilt, round-necked navy sweater, and blue-and-white striped cotton shirt, Kate knocked—a little tentatively—on the front door of her new home, Elmhurst, an impressive Victorian house with a modern extension. Her housemistress, Ann Patching—who became something of a surrogate mother during the school year—was there to greet her. Kate said good-bye to her parents and went upstairs to her room, her trunk packed full of notebooks, mementos, and pictures of her family and friends, plus a pretty bedspread Carole had sent along to make her feel at home.

Kate wasn't the only pupil to join halfway through the academic year: Sebastian Robles-Rudd, a boy from Argentina, also arrived on the same day. As a governor of St. Andrew's, the headmaster of Marlborough, Edward Gould, was aware of the circumstances under which Kate had left Downe House, and he took her under his wing, inviting her to join him and his wife for occasional mealtimes so that he could keep an eye on her. According to another pupil, Gemma Williamson, who lived in Mill Mead boarding house a short walk away, Kate arrived a slip of a girl and painfully shy. “Apparently she had been bullied very badly at her previous school and she certainly looked very thin and pale. She had very little confidence,” she told the
Daily Mail
.

Kate's residence house tutor, Joan Gall, recalled how timid she was on arrival and that she suffered from mild eczema, often a result of stress. “When she first arrived, she was very quiet. Coming into a big school like Marlborough was difficult, but she settled quickly,” she recalled. Ann Patching, who worked at the school for over a decade and was married to
Mitch Patching who taught rugby and French at the college, said that Kate didn't talk about her past experience. “She didn't make a big deal about it. I can't remember if it was her or Carole who mentioned Downe House. It was a concern, but they were determined to move on.”

Another pupil, Hannah Gillingham, who was in Kate's boarding house, was assigned to look after her, but Kate made friends quickly and was affectionately known as “Catherine Middlebum.” An early riser, she had no problem with the 7:00
A.M
. wake-up calls and was always the first at breakfast, where she typically enjoyed fresh croissants. Lessons started at 8:45
A.M
. and continued until lunch at 1:00
P.M
. Afterward, pupils played sports until 4:00
P.M
., when it was time to head back into the classroom until supper at 6:00
P.M
. Mealtimes were relaxed and pleasant in the atmosphere of the Victorian dining room, complete with its original arched beams. According to Mrs. Patching, Kate had a healthy appetite and soon put on the weight she had lost at Downe House. “Catherine loved eating. She loved lasagnas and pasta bakes, good old carb stuff. I used to do a chicken pesto. The girls were great to cook for because they would eat anything. Catherine always stayed very slim but she always had a very healthy appetite.”

Students did their homework, or “prep,” in the communal dormitories from 7:30 until 9:00
P.M
., with house tutors on hand to help. There was then time for some rest and relaxation. Walkmen were the latest thing, and Kate loved to either listen to music or read a novel. Her favorite TV show was
Friends
. According to Miss Gall, she was such a fan of the American sitcom that at one of the end-of-year concerts known as the “House Shout,” Kate belted out the theme tune
with her friends. Lights-out was at 10:30
P.M
. Mrs. Patching had a no-nonsense approach, and any horseplay would mean being assigned an early morning run the next morning.

Unlike at Downe House, Kate's class year was small. There were seventy girls in her house and just fourteen pupils in “The Remove,” as her year was known. She lived in a dormitory with three others—the girls didn't get their own rooms until they entered sixth form (the last two years of secondary school)—and in order to prevent them from becoming too cliquey, Mrs. Patching chose the dorm mates and rotated them every term. “It was a way of keeping things fresh,” she explained. “Catherine was able to settle in very easily, as soon as she joined. She got involved in school life and loved sport and music.”

It wasn't long before Kate's sporting prowess was observed, and she gained a coveted place on the school's hockey and netball teams. Much to her delight, she was made joint captain of the first tennis team with her friend Alice St. John Webster. Miss Gall, who was also head of physical education, recalled that Kate switched positions to goal attack in her netball and “was very good, but her hockey was stronger.” She also excelled in high jump and swimming.

Eager to ensure their daughter was happy, Carole and Michael visited Kate regularly. They came to watch interschool matches on Saturdays, and as the spring and summer terms progressed, she began to come out of her shell. During the summer holidays, she was full of stories about her school life, eager to make Pippa, who would be starting in the new academic year, feel excited and part of the school community. The fact that Pippa had won an all-rounder scholarship to Marlborough was a source of pride to the whole Middleton
family. “Pippa came into the school as a sports scholar. Catherine was very protective, but I don't think Pippa needed much protecting—she was very successful,” recalled Mrs. Patching. “She was in the first hockey team from a young age, while Catherine worked her way up. She settled in easily and Catherine kept an eye from a distance. There could have been jealousy on Catherine's part because Pippa was very talented. She was good at everything and sharper academically, but I don't think Catherine ever resented that. She was always pleased for her sister's success.” From her very first day, Pippa exuded a natural confidence, and along with her bubbly exuberance, she made friends easily, attained grade A's effortlessly, and was known, as she had been at St. Andrew's Prep, as “Perfect Pip.”