Kate (12 page)

For Kate, the end of Vice Chancellor Lang's speech marked the beginning of a hectic week of partying, meeting her “university parents”—older pupils who were in charge of looking after freshers—finding her way around the town, and settling into her residence hall. After a year of freedom and adventure, she was ready to begin life as an undergraduate. In between parties and Orientation Week events, Kate made Room A-31, her first-floor, corner bedroom, feel homey and welcoming. A practiced photographer, she put up a collage of photos—all framed with neat white borders—that she had taken of her family, friends, and travels in her gap year, with room to add more as she charted her university days. She and her roommate, Sarah Bates, got to know each other, chatting about their school days and people they knew in common. Sarah was also a boarding-school girl but very much into shooting, hunting, and fishing, and though the two young women got along well, their social lives took slightly different routes.

Kate had picked her accommodation wisely. St. Salvator's—or Sallies, as it is nicknamed—is a beautiful, Oxbridge-style residence hall and one of the last at St. Andrews that continues long-standing traditions, such as a formal dinner at High Table once a week. Most of the rooms have glorious views of the lawn, the North Sea, or St. Andrew's Castle, and the facilities—the well-resourced library, the stained-glass wooden-paneled dining hall, the pool and ping-pong tables, and an old-style common room, complete with open fire, a grand piano, and daily newspapers—allow the students to get to know
each other. Kate soon found her way around and was often seen relaxing in the common room, curled up in an armchair, a cup of tea in hand, either reading newspaper articles her father rather touchingly mailed to her or getting to know her fellow hall mates.

Kate had to make an effort to get to know people, but as Freshers' Week drew to a close, William moved into Room B-31 on the floor above her, surrounded by a ready-made group of friends, some of whom were, like him, Old Etonians. Known immediately as the “Sallies Boys,” they included Fergus Boyd, Ollie Chadwyck-Healey, Charlie Nelson, and Oli Baker. It certainly didn't take them long to spot “Beautiful Kate,” as she had been crowned by the other Sallies residents at the end of Freshers' Week. She was initially more reserved than many of the other young women, but her natural beauty was apparent. Tanned from a recent holiday in Barbados with her parents, fit from her regular early morning run or swim, and dressed in her comfortable Hennes jeans, fitted sweater, and signature cowboy boots, she radiated an outer freshness and an inner confidence.

It took William a couple of weeks to summon up the courage to ask Kate to join him and his friends for breakfast. He immediately remembered her, and they quickly discovered they had plenty in common besides their mutual friends. They were both health conscious, always opting for a breakfast of muesli and fruit over the cooked option; they discussed sports and skiing trips; they compared notes on their gap year experiences in Chile; and they talked about the different courses they planned to take in the history of art program. Kate got along well with the rest of the Sallies Boys, and within a couple of weeks, she was hanging out with the “Yahs,” as the
other students called them, sitting side by side on the long benches in the canteen eating meals with them, socializing in hall or going for drinks at Ma Bells or the West Port, the most popular student haunts in town.

Both Kate and William became friendly with an American student, Laura Warshauer, who lived down the corridor from Kate and was at St. Andrews for a year to study history of art. In shock after hearing the horrific news that many people in her hometown, New York City, had been killed in the catastrophic 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, she was comforted by her fellow students, including both William and Kate. Laura was a talented musician, composing and singing songs on her guitar. William would pop into her room to listen to her jamming, and Kate borrowed a tripod and camera to help Laura make an audition tape to send back to the States. But music wasn't Laura's only allure. “Will would often come to my room in search of cookies and hot chocolate,” she remembered. “I was known for always having food supplies, and I would often cook for us in halls.” Having developed a love of pasta in Florence, one of Kate's favorite pastimes was to join Laura for her popular lasagna parties, at which everyone would gather around and eat “on the floor of the halls just outside my bedroom door. Will, Ollie, and Fergus turned up once and brought plastic wine glasses from Woolworth's. Will seemed to really enjoy it.”

As the term took shape, Kate immersed herself in university life. Her courses were stimulating and she was hardworking, eager to learn more about the art of Renaissance Europe, twentieth-century paintings, and critical approaches in art history. She was a diligent student and often took notes for William when he was unable to attend lectures, going over
them later in the comfort of the common room, as the autumnal evenings gathered in around them. It soon became clear to others that they enjoyed a special connection. According to a former student, lots of people made jokes about it: “We would joke to her, ‘Bet you'll be wearing a tiara soon!'” Others were less kind: “Some of the girls in her year weren't very nice to her. There was a lot of bitching behind her back. Kate hated that, I think because she was bullied at school. She wasn't at all bitchy, she was always very lovely to everyone, but the other girls, and most of them were society ‘Yahs,' thought they should be with William and they were jealous that Kate was so close to him.”

If, for a relatively quiet student like Kate, surviving the hurly-burly of Freshers' Week had been tough, then navigating her way through the university's infamous “Raisin Weekend”—the wild, carnivalesque first-year initiation during which academic “mothers and fathers” dress up and chaperone their “children” through a weekend of partying, culminating in the largest outdoor shaving-cream fight on the planet—was scary. As Michael Choong, a close friend of both William and Kate, remembered, “Raisin Weekend starts on Sunday morning with a champagne breakfast, and drinking continues through to the early hours of Monday, when the foam fight starts at noon in the Quad. Kate and I ended up at the same party on Raisin Weekend because my academic mum knew Kate's academic mum. It was the first time I met Kate. We were both nervous but also excited. It was like a rite of passage into St. Andrew's society. It was a huge amount of fun. Kate was quite shy, not overly gregarious. She didn't wear much makeup, she was in jeans and a blouse. We all ended up swapping clothes, covered in felt-tip all over our faces and all
over our arms. It was an entire weekend of parties . . . The first semester was full of trepidation, you were finding your feet, it was all about discovery. I remember from Freshers' Week onwards, we basically just ended up going out for twenty nights in a row.”

When it came to socializing, William kept a low profile. Having declined to join in the Raisin Weekend festivities, he preferred to spend the evenings with his friends in Sallies, enjoying dinner parties rather than nights out at the clubs in the town. William was, naturally, cautious about those who tried to befriend him and had a built-in system of vetting people, planting red herrings to catch anyone he suspected of selling stories about him. He kept his distance from the many clubs and societies on offer to the students, although he did join the water polo team, and in order to keep his swimming technique up, swam each morning, with Kate, at the luxurious Old Course Hotel. Within a few weeks of the first semester, their friendship was firmly established, and as Laura Warshauer noticed, “They had each other's backs and looked out for each other.”

This was certainly true during Oli “Hairy” Baker's party in October of the first term. As Laura recalled, “Kate and I were eating brownies. Kate was never a big drinker, she didn't need alcohol to give her confidence. Will was getting really hit on by this girl at the party, and it was getting quite uncomfortable because he couldn't shake her off. He was being really polite, but this girl just didn't get the hint. All of a sudden Kate came up behind him and put her arms around him. He said ‘Oh, sorry, but I've got a girlfriend,' and he and Kate went off giggling. He mouthed ‘Thanks so much' to her in a really exaggerated way, but Kate was the only girl in the room who could
have done that. And that was just a month after we started university.”

Kate, however, was a long way from being William's girlfriend. She had attracted a number of admirers in Sallies: “Guys would go the canteen for breakfast and eye up Kate,” remembered Michael Choong, and she had already turned down Al (Alexander) Smith, a first-year student who took a psychology course with her. They had become friendly during Freshers' Week, and like most of the boys in their year, Al had developed a crush on Kate. “It started off as a flirtation before Al plucked up the courage to ask Kate out,” remembered one former student. “She turned him down, albeit very nicely. He was a little bit heartbroken but they stayed good friends.”

Al Smith recalled Kate as being bubbly and beautiful. “Kate and I met in the first week. We were academic siblings—my friend was our joint academic father. We went out a few times as a group to some local bars and had a lot of fun. Kate was very striking and beautiful. She was bubbly and open and very likable. A lot of boys fancied her and asked her out. We got to know each other well. She was a very conscientious student and always turned up for lectures in her first year. She got good grades and gave up psychology at the end of her first year to concentrate on history of art.”

Another first-year student, Sam Butcher, a devoted rugby player, also had designs on Kate. “Sam was charming and very sociable and came from Blackpool,” recalled a former student. “He was very popular and he really fancied Kate. He sent her a saucy text and asked her out, but he didn't get a reply.”

Kate had her romantic sights set elsewhere. Rupert Finch—otherwise known as “Finchy” or “Blue Hat Wonder”—was a handsome fourth-year law student. Never without his blue
Oakley cap, Rupert was part of a boarding-school group that lived in Flat 2, The Scores. Tall, swarthy, and extremely desirable, he and Kate soon became an item. According to Michael Choong, “All the blokes loved Kate and all the girls loved Rupert. They were a golden couple. He would have crazy parties at his house, and all-night drinking sessions following nights at Ma Bells, when the vodka bottle came out.” Kate had found herself a popular, older boyfriend, and while she was focused on her studies and committed to her hockey training and fitness regimen, she was enjoying a lively social life. The first term was going well for Kate.

Despite being happy to be going out with Rupert, it soon became apparent to those around her that Kate was wary of the other female friends in William's life. Unsurprisingly, he had no end of students interested in him. Many girls had gone to extreme lengths to meet him, even trying to change their degree program in order to attend history of art lectures. But being linked with women was no ordinary matter for the future King of England. He knew from past experience that any whiff of romance was pounced upon by the press and had the potential to cause both him and the young woman distress. Their families would be hounded and their every move charted. His summer romance with Rose Farquhar had remained secret—and did so for many years—but his more recent relationship with Arabella Musgrave, a member of the Glosse Posse and the daughter of Major Nicholas Musgrave, who managed the Cirencester Park Polo Club in Gloucestershire, was headline news. William had dated Arabella the summer before he started at the university, and the press had gotten wind of the romance, which came to a natural end when William left for Scotland. He wanted to be free to have
fun, and one of the first girls he spotted was the Texan heiress Meghann Gunderman—known as Gundy. When William asked her out—something he did not do lightly—it came as somewhat of a shock when she declined his advances. This seemed to make him want her more. One student remembered, “I heard William ask her out on a date, but she wasn't interested at all and she turned him down. He kept saying, ‘Why won't you go out with me?' She wasn't having it.”

Soon after this setback, while auditioning for a part in an adaptation of J. D. Salinger's novel
Franny and Zooey
, William met Carley Massy-Birch, an English language and creative writing student in the year ahead of him. Having enjoyed performing in school plays, William had noticed posters around town inviting male students to audition for one of two parts in the play. Accompanied at a distance by his protection officers, he bicycled to the Byer Theatre and, according to one of the directors, Andrew Sands, “He gave an audition and read from the script, as everyone else did. And it was quite a hard piece—he was in the bath talking to his mother. He wasn't nervous, he looked really good, and he delivered an amazing recital. Zooey is a bit of a fragile existential type and William got into it—he did it very well.” William didn't end up getting the part—the play was only on for four nights in the tiny theater, and the production team felt that it would be unfair to the theater's regular audiences if the auditorium was packed with hordes of press every night.

William was already on the fringes of the thespian set. His close friend Fergus was a talented actor, and William loyally went to see whatever he was appearing in. However, after his audition he became more involved, smitten by Carley, an active
member of the Drama Society. Raised on a farm in Axminster, in Devon, she described herself as “a country bumpkin.” She was also extremely modest, as she was often praised for her sharp intellect and her arresting natural beauty. Unlike Meghann, Carley was eager to go out with him, and William was soon bicycling to her house on Crail Lane, where they got to know each other better over coffee and cakes at Cherry's café at the end of her road. Often, Carley would cook supper for them, and they were frequently seen drinking pints of cider at the Castle pub on North Street.