Wearing a sheer black lace dress over a black bandeau bra and black knickers, Kate Middleton sashayed down the catwalk in the university town of St Andrews in Fife, revealing her lissome figure.
Under the watchful gaze of Prince William, who paid £200 for a front-row VIP seat, the 20-year-old brunette, towards the end of her first year at university, was taking part in a charity fashion show sponsored by the designer Yves Saint Laurent. The English rose had arrived at Scotland's oldest seat of learning the previous autumn. Now, just seven months later, she found herself in the Prince's inner circle and had attracted the attention of the most eligible bachelor in the Western world.
Set in the tiny seaside town of St Andrews on the east coast of Scotland, once the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland and now renowned as the home of golf, the University of St Andrews is the oldest university in Scotland and one of the most prestigious in the British Isles.
The town is overrun by students, who make up a third of its population. Prominent in the town's newsagents is the student paper, The Saint, which had contributed to the university's growing reputation for a wild social life when it conducted a survey, picked up by the national press, revealing that students had very active sex lives and had been known to make love in the laundry rooms in their halls of residence and even in the ruined cathedral.
William Wales, as the student Prince styled himself, arrived at the university after freshers' week.
Ever mindful of his role in life, the prudent Prince decided that the best way to avoid adverse publicity was to create a barrier between himself and the other students, closeting himself in his room or the university library, spurning invitations to join clubs and societies, and avoiding student parties. It was a decision that blighted his first term at St Andrews, as his self-imposed exile made it impossible for him to integrate into normal student life. "I thought I would probably end up in a gutter completely wrecked," he admitted in a candid moment, when asked in an interview why he had not attended freshers' week, "and the people I had met that week wouldn't end up being my friends anyway."
Nonetheless, the Prince was able to make some new friends. Although William and Kate lived on different floors at the hall of residence, they gradually bonded over shared interests as they worked and played together. Kate's lineage might not have been as blue-blooded as the Prince's, but they had an enormous amount in common, both having been brought up in rural surroundings and sharing a love of the countryside (a prerequisite for fitting into the Royal Family, where hunting, shooting and fishing, watching polo and going to the races are the norm). The two teenagers had both been to exclusive public schools, in neighbouring counties. While Kate was good at hockey and netball, William had an aptitude for rugby, soccer and polo, and they were both keen skiers and tennis players. After school, they had spent their gap years travelling around the world.
Slowly, Kate became a member of the Prince's St Andrews set. But while Kate threw herself into university life, William kept a low profile for fear of tarnishing the royal name. That meant no drinking excessively, taking drugs or kissing in public.
Still, within weeks William was dating Carly Massy-Birch, a pretty, fresh-faced brunette who worked as an actress after graduating, appearing in a few stage and radio plays. Kate, too, met someone who would win her heart during her first year at university. Rupert Finch was a 22-year-old law student in his final year at St Andrews when he first met Kate.
William and Carly split up around the time of Raisin Weekend, an annual festival of hedonism and celebration held on the last weekend of November. Freshers are entertained by their academic "parents," or mentors, a tradition that supposedly dates back centuries. Typically, freshers attend a tea party thrown by their mothers, go on a pub crawl with their fathers and then put on fancy dress for the traditional foam fight.
The breakup with Carly was perhaps the catalyst for some soul-searching on the Prince's part. Although he had made some good friends by the time he returned to Highgrove on December 15 for the Christmas vacation, he was having second thoughts about his choice of university and was thinking of switching to a campus closer to home. Feeling lonely and, in the small, relatively remote town, isolated from his old friends nearer home, William was finding it difficult truly to settle in. He was also frustrated by the attention from American students, who gawped at him and followed him around like sheep. Prince Charles pointed out to his son how detrimental giving up on St Andrews would be for his public image, but it is Kate who is generally credited with being the person who persuaded him to stay at St Andrews in the long term after his "wobble," as it was dubbed by royal aides. Next term, she suggested that he might feel happier if he changed to a geography degree instead of continuing with history of art, and he did so at the end of his second year.
By the time she sauntered down the catwalk that April, they had both found their feet and settled into the student lifestyle, albeit in slightly different ways.
While William's first public appearance since arriving at the university, having declined to attend high-profile events such as the freshers' ball, signalled his intention to become more involved in student life, Kate's stroll down the catwalk revealed a more daring and adventurous side to the hitherto demure young lady. Her increasing confidence was also revealed by her bullish approach to the controversial Kate Kennedy Club, an elite organization for male students along the lines of Oxford's Bullingdon Club. The club has been criticized for being sexist and generally chauvinistic. William, ever cautious, initially turned down membership, but Kate co-founded a rival organization, the Lumsden Club, for female students only.
Gradually, William followed Kate's lead and began to immerse himself in student life. They were often to be spotted drinking and chatting at Ma Bells, the bar in the basement of the St Andrews Golf Hotel, which is close to the university and overlooks the seafront. Known as "Yah Yah Bells" because of its reputation as a hangout for the university's Sloane Rangers, it was often heaving in the evenings with students dancing to the resident DJ.
"Everybody thinks I drink beer, but I actually like cider," Prince William commented in one of the official interviews he gave during his time as a student - part of a strategy to keep the press at bay.
By the end of their first year, Kate had become close enough friends with the next-but-one in line to the throne to be invited to share a flat the following year with him and two of their closest friends in the heart of town.
But despite her elevation into royal circles, the 20-year-old undergraduate still had to pay off her student debt. She was hired by up-market catering firm Snatch to serve drinks at one of the social events of the season, the Henley Regatta, and was paid £5.25 an hour. "Kate's a superb barmaid," owner Rory Laing told newspapers. "We hired her at the Henley Regatta and hopefully she'll be coming down to Cowes to work at our Snatch bar here. As we only employ former public-school pupils, she fits our profile brilliantly. She's a pretty girl, so she takes home plenty in tips."
That summer, Kate revealed a unique ability to balance two very different aspects of her life - those of royal playmate and hard-up student - showing the combination of sophistication and girl-next-door ordinariness that would be the making of her.
This excerpt is condensed and reprinted from the upcoming book Kate: The Making of a Princess by Claudia Joseph with the permission of her publisher, Key Porter Books. The book is to be published later this month. © Claudia Joseph, 2010.