The engagement that almost never was: Wills didn't realise what he had until he almost let her go...

By Geoffrey Levy


For some it is fate, for others, chance. Anyone who has experienced a lengthy courtship will understand how easy it is, in moments of uncertainty, to walk away.


In just such a moment, Kate could have lost her prince. That she and William loved each other was never questioned. They ‘fitted’ so well, friends said.

But three years ago, when William was hit by doubts and they split for three months, the story of their relationship could easily have ended very differently.

It is intriguing that Kate had the strength of character to win back her prince by doing all the things that his circle had urged her not to do.

She went out partying in thigh-skimming skirts; she went roller-skating (and was photographed spreadeagled on the floor after falling over in a most unladylike ­fashion).

In fact, she and her sister Pippa partied so hard they were nicknamed the ‘Sizzler sisters’. In the wake of this, the Queen was privately said to consider Kate Middleton ‘something of a show-off’ and courtiers were ‘appalled’ at such a display.

So, what was Kate up to? She was taking the biggest gamble of her life. Weeks before, she had asked William for reassurance that she was the only woman in his life — particularly since he had been photographed in a nightclub with his arm around a pretty young woman, his hand apparently cupping her right breast.

‘She felt that William was making her look a fool,’ recalls one of her oldest friends. ‘What she wanted was a clarification of where she stood, and what was going on.

'She wasn’t looking for an engagement ring, she just wanted to know that he was committed to her, and only to her.’

Faced with what he saw as demand for his long-term commitment, especially his fidelity, the 6ft 3in Prince declined to give in. And on that sad and uneasy note, the romance was terminated

Kate could have slipped away into oblivion, but instead she risked her reputation for quiet modesty in order to show William just what he was missing.

It wasn’t easy. The first thing William did after their separation was to rush off with friends to the Mahiki nightclub in London’s West End, leap on a table and cry: ‘I’m free.’

But like so many young men who never know quite what they want until they no longer have it, he rapidly began to realise just how much he missed Kate.


Drifting apart? A chill in the air at the Cheltenham races in 2007, and right, Kate and William celebrating his 26th birthday in 2008


To make matters worse, there she was, appearing in photographs looking slim and stunning, apparently enjoying life without him. She wasn’t, of course — in fact, she was devastated by the end of their romance — but she was ­playing a blinder.

After three months apart, she got an unexpected invitation from William to join him at a fancy dress party at his Army barracks at Bovington in Dorset. It was June 2007, and they never parted again.

Yesterday, at last, no one was calling Kate Middleton ‘Waity Katie’. In fact, from now on she wants to be known as Catherine, the name she has always asked her friends to use.

A ring is finally on the finger of the middle-class girl from the Home Counties — that beguiling beauty with long, dark hair who was first seen kissing William in the Sea Life Centre in St Andrews early in 2003.

It soon emerged that she was the girl who had earlier ‘brought his eyes out on sticks’ when she ­sauntered down the catwalk at a charity fashion show in a diaphanous dress which left little to the imagination. ‘Wow!’ William ­whispered to his friend Fergus Boyd. ‘Kate’s hot.’


Their romance was initially seen as one of those liaisons that princes have before a girl from the ‘right kind of family’ comes along a bit later in life for them to marry.

But it wasn’t like that. Kate was different. She was cool and intelligent and, most significantly, she didn’t treat him with the deference he often encountered.

William was 21 and — although he was tall, broad-­shouldered and handsome — he had sown remarkably few wild oats. Indeed, this lack of experience — so different from his father, who had many girlfriends in his 20s — is what has always worried royal courtiers.

Some remain uneasy about the possibility of William sowing those wild oats in later years.

But right from the start, the Prince has enjoyed having such an attractive woman on his arm. And Kate has been happy to play a quiet supporting role — albeit too quiet for many who have questioned her ‘enthusiasm’ for public life.

Still, back in 2003 few would have predicted that theirs would be a long-term romance.

But almost from the start, Kate was more than just a girlfriend. With astonishing speed, William took her home for the weekend to Highgrove and introduced her to his father, Prince Charles


She met his friends skiing at Klosters, he took her (aptly enough) to the Middleton Hunt in Yorkshire and soon, with two other St Andrews students, they were sharing a house at university.

Although many doubted the romance, it must be said that Prince Charles was instantly comfortable in Kate’s company, noting that one of her most attractive features was that she was not given to bowing and scraping.

Yes, jibes pursued her family over their social background, especially the one that said her mother, former air stewardess Carole Middleton, had dispatched her to St Andrews just because she knew the Prince was going there.

Friends have always laughed this off, but it hurt the family, as did the smirking ‘doors-to-manual’ mockery of Mrs Middleton’s former career as an air hostess.

Well, whoever those cruel so-called jokers were, they’re not smirking now. In fact, far from giving William doubts, the taunts brought him closer to Kate. They encouraged his characteristic support for the underdog, a trait that so defined his mother Princess Diana.

Until their split in 2007, Kate was herself disturbed by the things she knew people were saying, not so much for herself but for her family. But after their reunion later that year, a friend says, ‘she was much calmer about it, and so were Mr and Mrs Middleton’



By then, Kate was regularly staying with William at Clarence House, where he has his own flat. At the same time, she ­continued to live at her parents’ home in the Berkshire village of Bucklebury, in the same bedroom she’d had since she was 14.

Kate remained the classically middle-class (and middle-brow) girl she’d been when she went up to St Andrews. According to friends, she has scarcely changed despite the new world into which the future King has introduced her.

All his friends have become her friends, though Kate herself has never collected many close personal confidantes of her own. ‘They like Kate because she’s always herself,’ says a friend of the Royal Family.

‘She’s cool and decisive and is never scared of telling William he’s wrong if she thinks he is. He loves that air of independence she gives out — so very different from the girl that people think has done nothing but wait for the phone to ring with him on the other end.’

And ever since Prince William was posted to Wales as a search and rescue helicopter pilot with the RAF, Kate has quietly been spending weekends with him at the remote farmhouse he has rented near the base, RAF Valley in Anglesey.

Apart from his police bodyguard, they live like any other service couple, making themselves as unobtrusive as possible and shopping in the local Tesco.

True, Kate Middleton never had much of a career. She was briefly a buyer for the fashion chain Jigsaw, owned by friends of her family, and most recently she has been acting as the Party Pieces photographer, taking pictures of items for the website.
Just a few months ago, photos of her and William frolicking in the alpine snow emerged. One of the pictures showed them on a snowmobile, with her clinging on to him.
Well, we know now that he was clinging on to her just as hard. As for that career she never fashioned for herself — one is certainly being fashioned for her now






source: dailymail