William and Harry (22 page)

It was hard not to draw comparisons between William and his father. Had William also met the right woman at the wrong time? Haunted by the spectre of the past, there were real fears at the Palace that Kate would become the next Camilla. While William partied, Kate received a message of support from the Duke of Edinburgh. So often misinterpreted as aloof and out of touch, he assured her that William would present a ring ‘when
the time is right’. It was a well-intended reassurance that Kate valued.

While many might have moped, Kate was in no mood to indulge in prolonged self-pity; nor was she going to get depressed about the spiteful comments from some that she was too middle class to be dating a prince. Instead she put on a brave face and a thigh-skimming minidress and partied. Her message to William was clear: ‘Look what you’re missing!’ In the past some of William’s friends had been lukewarm to Kate. They greeted her arrival at Boujis with stage whispers of ‘Doors to manual’, a reference to her mother’s career as an air hostess and hitherto the source of much mirth, but now they rallied round. Guy Pelly, once viewed by Kate with suspicion but now a close friend, assured her that she was welcome at his club. They had not always seen eye to eye, and Kate had once complained that Guy was a bad influence on William. Once, when they were on holiday together, Kate had admonished William and Guy for recklessly riding their mopeds on the lawn in front of their villa where anyone could see them. Then there was Kate’s habit of checking out restaurants to make sure their table was sufficiently discreet. But despite their differences Guy recognised that Kate was good for William. He knew the prince well and advised Kate to give him some space. From someone best known as the jester of the royal court, it was wise counsel.

Not for the first time Kate bided her time and immersed herself in a project. Her close friend from Marlborough Alicia Fox Pitt had signed up to the Sisterhood, a group of twenty-one girls who planned to row from Dover to Cap Gris Nez near Calais in a dragon boat to raise money for charity. It proved to be
exactly what Kate needed. ‘Kate was very down and I think the training became her therapy,’ Emma Sayle, who was in charge and became close to Kate, recalled.

Unknown to anyone outside their inner circle, William and Kate were already heading for a reconciliation, according to Emma.

The problem was once again that Kate had become the story. She had been photographed during a training session and the picture was published on the cover of
Hello!
magazine. Previously
Kate had complained about media intrusion and had asked for the Prince of Wales’s lawyers to get involved. Now she was gracing a magazine cover. It was an unfortunate turn of events. ‘Is it just me who is baffled by this young woman who, having winged, moaned and stamped her feet over the press attention heaped upon her as potential bride-in-waiting to a royal now seems driven by the oxygen of publicity?’ enquired the
Daily Mirror
’s columnist Sue Carroll. The
Daily Mail
’s royal commentator Richard Kay noted, ‘Clarence House had watched on with growing unease as the Sisterhood’s practice sessions had become a magnet for the paparazzi.’ Kate pulled out of the race in August, but by then she and William had been secretly dating again for a couple of months.

William had invited Kate to a fancy-dress party at his barracks in Bovington, and it had been clear to everyone there that they were back together. William, in hot pants, a ‘wife beater’ vest and policeman’s helmet, had followed Kate around ‘like a lost puppy’ all night. Kate, who looked stunning and toned from her training, was dressed in a revealing naughty nurse’s outfit. The theme for the night was Freakin’ Naughty, and blow-up dolls were hanging from the ceilings while provocatively dressed waitresses handed out potent cocktails. Outside, guests played on a bouncy castle and dived into a paddling pool full of gunge, but William and Kate stuck to the dance floor. ‘They couldn’t keep their hands off each other,’ recalled a guest. ‘William didn’t care that people were looking. At about midnight he started kissing her. His friends were joking that they should get a room, and it wasn’t long before William took Kate back to his quarters.’

On 24 June 2007 I revealed on the front page of the
Mail on Sunday
that William and Kate were together again, having been given the nod by a senior Palace aide that the relationship was back on track. By coincidence I had spent that weekend with Guy Pelly and William’s close friend Tom Inskip at the Beaufort Polo Club. William and Kate had been due to attend but instead were holed up at Highgrove alone. They were back together and this time it was for good.

It was a Tuesday evening in June and a frisson of excitement rippled through the beautiful crowd at Boujis nightclub in South Kensington. One of its most famous patrons had just been whisked through the club and down the stairs to the exclusive VIP room. The group of long-legged blondes on the small dance floor had flicked their glossy hair and pouted at the young celebrity as he made his way through the throng. The resident DJ played his favourite house track, Shakedown’s ‘At Night’, and Jake Parkinson-Smith, the club’s affable manager, had cleared the velvet-upholstered suite ahead of the royal party’s arrival. Parkinson-Smith has known both William and Harry for years and has a reputation for looking after his royal friends, who include the princes’ cousins Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. Harry’s favourite drinks, Belvedere vodka and cans of Red Bull, along with several bottles of Dom Perignon champagne, were already chilling in stainless-steel ice buckets.

Ahead of his arrival a team of protection officers had swept the room and taken seats at a discreet table, where they sat sipping Coke. The prince, dressed in jeans and an open-necked shirt (like everyone else he had been asked to remove his baseball cap),
jumped up onto the sofa, an impish grin on his excited face. ‘Let’s party,’ he shouted above the din, a £180 magnum of vodka held high above his distinctive crop of red hair.

Boujis DJ Sam Young has known the princes for a while. ‘The reason the boys come back time and time again is because they feel relaxed and in an environment they trust. Boujis is like a private house party. They even used to have their own barman called Gordon to look after them.’ Tables 11, 12 and 13, which are close to the VIP room, had also been cleared that night to ensure that there could be no snooping on the royal party – which was just as well because Harry was out with the one girl guaranteed to rile Chelsy Davy, who was at home in South Africa working hard for her finals.

Natalie Pinkham, a pretty TV presenter, was Harry’s date for the night. The twenty-nine-year-old had met the prince in 2001, when her then-boyfriend England rugby captain Matt Dawson introduced them at a match. With her impressive knowledge of sport and her ability to drink most grown men under the table, Natalie immediately hit it off with Harry. Natalie recalled their first meeting: ‘Matt introduced us and I looked after Harry with Clive Woodward’s wife Jane while we were in the stands, not that he really needed looking after. We just chatted to him and then Matthew and I became friends with him. I realised very quickly what a normal bloke he was. I was in my final year at university at this point and our friendship has continued since then.’ They stayed in touch, and Harry would send Natalie emails while she was cooking baked-bean suppers in her student hall at Nottingham University to the disbelief of her housemates. In December 2001 there were reports that Harry had sent her a
thong for Christmas and that he ‘fancied her rotten’ despite the six-year age gap. ‘We get on well and have a lot of fun, but that’s as far as it went,’ Natalie told me.

The daughter of a barrister and property developer, Natalie is ambitious, good-looking, great fun and, much to her credit, fiercely protective of her friendship with Harry. On this particular occasion they were in the mood to party, and the champagne corks continued to pop as they danced and chatted in the dimly lit VIP room. When it came to closing time, Harry suggested continuing the party at Mark Dyer’s house. The army officer turned publican often allows his basement flat to be used as a party venue for Harry and his friends – much to the annoyance of the long-suffering protection officers, who have to wait patiently in their cars until their royal charge is ready to call it a night. At Dyer’s Harry can be himself, safe in the knowledge that what goes on inside those four walls stays there. The drink always flows freely, and good-looking girls are never in short supply.

By all accounts the evening had been a great deal of fun, but by 5 a.m. Natalie was ready for bed. As the prince escorted her to his waiting Range Rover, Natalie, a little unsteady on her feet after eight hours of drinking, begged Harry for a kiss goodnight. ‘Not here,’ he said before whisking her back down the steps. They emerged seconds later, blissfully unaware that their late-night encounter had been captured by a long lens. When the story hit the newspapers the next day, there was an awkward long-distance call to Chelsy in South Africa. It wasn’t the first time Harry had had to explain himself.

It was May 2006 and Harry was a month into his reconnaissance training with the Household Cavalry at Bovington in
Dorset. Unlike Sandhurst, where he had been expected to adhere to a strict timetable, he had plenty of free time and on Fridays he couldn’t wait to get home to London and hit Boujis, where he was afforded VIP treatment – known at the club as the ‘royal comp’. Like William, Harry’s royal status guaranteed him free drinks as well as the company of an endless supply of gorgeous young women. Sadly for Chelsy, 2006 was a summer of rather tacky confessions.

First was the rather breathless account of Catherine Davies, a thirty-four-year-old mother of two who claimed she was seduced by the soldier prince at a house party in Fulham. ‘I was absolutely speechless. I was against the wall and he literally lifted me off the floor and gave me a lovely kiss which I was stunned by,’ she told the
Mail on Sunday
. Miss Davies was apparently not the only woman to succumb to the prince’s charms. That July he reportedly danced with a well-known page three girl and a masseuse who claimed the prince had kissed her on the lips at Boujis. The flurry of tabloid tales left Chelsy in tears and cast fresh doubts on their relationship. It was her best friend Kirsten Rogers, who Chelsy grew up with in Zimbabwe, who telephoned Harry to admonish him for being insensitive. When term finished, Chelsy flew to London to spend some time with Harry. They had not seen each other since their idyllic fortnight in South Africa that spring, and Chelsy was running up huge bills on her mobile phone talking to Harry. She had told her friends in South Africa that she was in the relationship for the long term but was worried about her boyfriend’s roving eye. Harry assured her that she was the one, and for the first time Charles gave his seal of approval, allowing Harry and Chelsy to share a room at
Highgrove. They also rented a four-bedroom house just a fifteen-minute drive from his officers’ mess so that they could have some privacy.

If his indiscretions had put pressure on their relationship it didn’t show, and the couple were inseparable that summer. They went to London to see friends and partied at their favourite nightclubs. In July they attended the Cartier International Day, where high-profile guests paid £200 for the privilege of watching the young royal play polo for the Prince of Wales’s team. Harry did not leave Chelsy’s side, a stark contrast to the previous year, when I witnessed Harry and Guy Pelly dancing wildly on the tables in the Chinawhite marquee after the prince had scored the winning goal. Harry was in the mood to celebrate, and cigarette in one hand and vodka and cranberry in the other, he had been surrounded by a gaggle of pretty girls. This time he was with Chelsy, in a stunning off-the-shoulder chiffon dress, and on his best behaviour. At one point they escaped the crowds to share a hot dog in the car park.

Harry was calmer when Chelsy was around, and her positive influence had not escaped the notice of his father. When she flew home in August she was confident they could last the distance. Secretly they had hatched a plan for her to move to Britain, where she would enroll on a postgraduate course. It was not long and she promised she would be worth the wait. This time she had no need to worry about Harry getting up to no good. On the advice of the boys’ protection officers, Charles had told William and Harry to stay away from Boujis. There had been one too many headlines along the lines of T
HE
B
OOZE
B
ROTHERS
and they needed to keep a low profile. The Queen
and the Duke of Edinburgh were said to be concerned that the princes were becoming too well known for their late-night antics. While no one was suggesting they should live like monks, they were in the public eye and some decorum needed to be preserved.

With his military training due to end in October, Harry had to knuckle down to some serious work. Although the Household Cavalry is best known for its ceremonial presence at state occasions, one of the key reasons both Harry and later William chose to join the regiment is that it carries out front-line reconnaissance work. At the Royal Armoured Corps centre at Bovington Harry was acquiring the skills that would enable him to lead twelve men into a war zone, where his job would be to scout out enemy positions using Scimitar armoured vehicles.