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Look what you're missing, Wills

by GEOFFREY LEVY and RICHARD KAY

Last updated at 21:58 20 April 2007



As a keepsake it is bigger than most, not something a girl can fling back at a former lover like a diamond ring or a fur coat.

But each time Kate Middleton gets behind the wheel of her sporty Audi, you could forgive her for thinking of Prince William and of what might have been...

The royals love their Audis and have a highly discounted leasing deal not available to ordinary motorists. Both Prince Charles and Camilla have them. So does Prince Harry.

And it was on the advice of William, who has a powerful S4 4.2 litre saloon, that Kate recently joined the royal Audi set. She, too, negotiated a leasing deal on special terms.

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With full-throttle irony, the A3 hatchback coupe was delivered last month - just as their romance was moving inexorably to its close.

One week after the split, Audi are happy for Kate to keep the car on the same enhanced 'royal' terms.

"We see her as the next Liz Hurley - always in the limelight," admits an Audi insider.

But Kate may not wish to keep it, for two reasons. One is the memories which just getting into the driving seat will generate, a constant reminder of happier times with a future king.

The second is what that Audi really represents - the car is an awkward symbol of just how far, in the angry words of a senior royal courtier, "William led that young woman up the garden path. He has behaved disgracefully".

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This is a scathing condemnation of the 24-year-old Prince, especially by someone in such close proximity to events.

And it is a view, we can reveal, shared by many in the royal circle. Kate and her much maligned family, of course, continue to say nothing.

Dismantling a four-year affair, during which they lived together for half that time at St Andrews University, was never going to be as easy as simply saying goodbye - at least, not for Kate and her parents.

William was able to duck out of the limelight by disappearing down to Bovington camp in Dorset on an Army course.

On Wednesday evening he slipped out from camp and drove to Poole, 14 miles away, with his royal security minder to the Empire cinema to see the ice skating film Blades Of Glory - a comedy. Other cinemagoers have remarked on how much he guffawed with laughter.

Meanwhile Kate, who was given 'compassionate leave' from her job at Jigsaw, the fashion chain owned by family friends where she is an accessories buyer, had retreated to the family home in a Berkshire village.

But not for long.

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At 2.30am yesterday morning, Kate was still out partying with friends at the Mahiki nightclub in Mayfair - and it cannot be mere coincidence that for her first girls' night out she chose the same club that William went to exactly a week earlier, after their break-up.

She didn't jump on a table yelling 'I'm freeeee!' as William did, but her revealing mini dress exposing both cleavage and thigh was a clear statement.

And the Prince's close friend Guy Pelly, who was also at the club, will doubtless report to him that Kate was having a good time.

Who could possibly have imagined this a week ago?

Quite apart from the Audi, the royals themselves had observed how intimately William was involving Kate in every aspect of both his life and that of the Royal Family.

They noted that he and Kate flew back from holiday in Mustique in time for him to bring her to the Wiltshire country wedding in May last year of his step-sister Laura Parker Bowles to former male model Harry Lopes, grandson of the late Lord Astor of Hever. Significantly, Prince Harry did not bring Chelsy.

And in royal circles it did not go unnoticed - or privately unremarked - that William invited Kate's parents to his passing out Sovereign's Parade at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, just before Christmas.

"Kate was very at home among the royals and looked for all the world like one of the family," says the aide. "She was so comfortable with them that I haven't the slightest doubt she believed she was just one step away from being one of them, that William would marry her. So did most of us."

What no one knew, least of all Kate, was the shock that went through William when he read in the newspapers that Woolworths were already anticipating an engagement by designing 'William and Kate' souvenir plates and mugs, as well as other memorabilia including computer mouse mats, slippers and thimbles. This was the defining moment of the relationship.

When his mother, on the eve of her wedding to the Prince of Wales, told her sisters she wasn't sure she wanted to go through with it, their response was to remind her: "Bad luck, Duch (Diana's childhood nickname), your face is on the teatowels so you're too late to chicken out now."

One of William's friends says: "Suddenly the enormity of what he was drifting into hit him - and hit him hard.

"It was November, and he had already extended his Sovereign's Parade invitation to Kate's parents, Carole and Michael Middleton. It woke him up to what was happening.

"It seemed to send him off the rails a bit - from that moment he was out partying and enjoying himself without Kate quite a lot. He even let himself be photographed with other girls - maybe it was all part of a plan."

If it was, it certainly worked, because Kate herself was beginning to feel the first real flutterings of uncertainty.

She had first felt a little uneasy about things when they were at university, but that soon passed.

Similarly, when they emerged from St Andrews two years ago, it seemed to her that William was displaying an unusually close interest in the actress granddaughter of the motor-racing 6th Earl Howe, Lady Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, but that died down, too.

Yet when William emerged from Sandhurst and joined the Blues and Royals, Kate could see his interest in other pretty women seemed to be increasing.

For his part, William was being very much his father's son - he wanted to play the field while keeping Kate 'on station'.

The obsessively private Prince, soon to be 25, even allowed himself to be photographed in a nightclub with his arm so completely round a girl that he was cupping her right breast.

These were nights when Kate was usually returning home alone to the flat in Chelsea which her parents bought in 2002 (for £780,000 - and no mortgage), where she has been living since moving to London to remain close to William after university.

Because of William's visits, her parents had even taken police advice and spent thousands of pounds on security measures, including panic alarms and a direct link to a local police station.

Now Kate knew she had to have it out with him.

"William was making her look like a fool," says one of the Prince's circle.

"All she wanted was a clarification of where she stood and what was going on. She wasn't looking for an engagement ring or anything like that. She just wanted to know that he was committed to her, and only her."

But this was a commitment William was not prepared to give.

Instead, he made it clear he was quite happy to continue going out with her so long as he could still have his 'freedom' - a very princely arrangement.

Kate wanted him to make up his mind - her or freedom.

Faced with what he interpreted as a demand for his long-term commitment, especially his fidelity, Prince William couldn't give it. And on that sad note, his four-year romance with Kate Middleton ended.

The 'class' factor about which so much has been written this week - and which must have hurt Kate as much as it exasperated William - played no part in the break-up.

In Kate's demand for commitment from the Prince there were plaintive echoes of a very similar call for loyalty which Princess Diana made to Prince Charles over Camilla Parker Bowles.

Charles famously raged at Diana that she was wanting to make him "the first Prince of Wales in history not to have a mistress".

Though much earlier in life, William, in effect, seemed to be saying much the same thing - the royal Princes' domestic equivalent of having their cake and eating it.

Little wonder that Kate Middleton, like Diana, found such an arrangement unacceptable.

Just how like his father William will ultimately turn out to be, one cannot say, but there is yet another eerie echo of his parents' disagreements.

Few who know the oft-told Diana story can be unaware that when Charles took his young bride to America he was jealous when the crowds acclaimed her and virtually ignored him.

Astonishingly, when Kate and William were still together, the Prince was privately expressing his dismay that Kate was able to generate excitement and attention - outshining him - even when she was not with him.

Meanwhile, William's freedom has inevitably rekindled the old parlour game of 'find the lady', usually played in the smarter drawing rooms of the capital when a royal prince becomes available for marriage.

Jecca Craig, the lively daughter of a British-born Kenyan conservationist, who was close to William before he went to university, might expect a call from William.

So might Tess Shepherd, the pig farmer's daughter he met at Boujis, that other late-night watering hole of the royal princes.

But the one mouthful of a name that keeps coming back and which society takes seriously is the dazzling Lady Isabella Anstruther-Gough Calthorpe.

Isabella, 24, is the daughter of Sixties beauty Lady Mary Gaye Curzon, whose father was the 6th Earl Howe.

Blonde Isabella has known William for some years as a 'good and close' friend and if princely history is anything to go by, the fact that she goes out with Sam Branson, son of billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard, would not put William off.

They have shimmied together at the odd nightclub, and Kate is understood to have felt decidedly uneasy about the way William was obviously taken with her.

Eighteen months ago when William was seen to be deeply engrossed 'for ages' with the lissome actress, Kate stormed out.

The word 'crush' has been used to describe what he felt, but some in his circle say this understates what he feels about her, which is undiminished.

The omens, however, do not look good.

Isabella is an ambitious actress known in the theatre as Isabella Calthorpe. Currently she is playing Lisa in the West End production of Dirty Dancing, where she has a year's contract until the late summer.

"Isabella has told anyone and everyone -including Prince William - that she is dedicated to her career and that her career comes first," explains one of her theatre friends.

"She adores Sam and their relationship is happy and successful because he does what he does and allows her the space to get on with her life and pursue the success she has dreamed of since leaving LAMDA (the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art).

"All this talk of her and William has made her very miserable. She has a huge liking and respect for the Prince, but any idea that she is waiting in the wings for him is absolute nonsense."

At least Isabella is not leading him up the garden path.


www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-449817/Look-youre-missing-Wills.html