Rows over a best friend’s wedding, the shadow of Chelsy and why Cressie and Harry really split
THERE is nothing more likely to turn a courting couple’s thoughts to their own potential path to matrimony than attending the lavish wedding of their mutual friends. But in the case of Cressida Bonas, who was due to fly to Memphis with her boyfriend Prince Harry to attend the nuptials of Harry’s best pal Guy Pelly yesterday, this glimpse into her own future seems to have brought on a fatal case of the jitters.
She is said to have ‘panicked’ at the thought of having all eyes on her after learning that she was to be placed next to Harry on the top table at the wedding breakfast thrown i n honour of Pelly and his bride, American heiress Lizzy Wilson, in the US city.
According to sources close to Harry and Cressida, that led to a bust-up between the lovebirds, during which former dance student Miss Bonas announced she would no longer be joining Harry on the trip.
Within hours of the row, the couple were informing their shocked friends and family that their two-year relationship was over. Certainly, nobody would blame 25-year-old Cressie, as she is known to friends, if she has looked into her future as a royal bride and got a severe case of cold feet.
Not least because Harry shows no signs of being prepared to give up his bachelor-like taste for big-time carousing.
The Mail has learnt that another reason matters came to a head was Cressida’s discovery at the 11th hour that Harry’s plans for the celebrations included some pre-wedding ‘boys’ partying’ to which she was not invited.
That was enough to set alarm bills ringing for the willowy Cressida. After all, Harry has form in this area. Lest we forget, his infamous drunken jaunt with his mates to Las Vegas in August 2012 led to him being photographed stark naked by a total stranger while surrounded by bikini- clad girls in a hotel suite. At the time, Cressie, who had been dating him for only a few months, played down his high-jinks as typical Harry.
However, with their relationship on a far more serious footing, friends say she was less willing to be so indulgent. Indeed, while sources close to both parties are at pains to stress that the split — which all insist may be only temporary — was reached mutually, some say there remained ‘trust issues’ between the couple as a legacy of the Vegas episode.
That said, friends and family all speak of their shock at the speed at which the situation has changed so dramatically.
‘Cressie was really happy and looking forward to their trip to America,’ said one friend. ‘ Things were very much on.
‘Then she had cancelled her plans and — bang — that was it. Why she was so happy one day and then so suddenly unhappy the next, no one honestly knows. It seems as if there is a bit of a stand-off between her and Harry over things at the moment, and it’s something of a mystery as to how long this will last — a week, a month, for ever?’ Another source added: ‘This really has happened very suddenly.
‘I know for a fact that at Easter they were very much together, things were as good between them as they ever were. Cressida is young, so this could be just a blip. It’s just a real shame, though, as they made a really cool couple.’
Perplexed friends say that as recently as ten days ago, Cressida had stayed with her boyfriend at Nottingham Cottage, Harry’s home at Kensington Palace, and gave no hint of problems in their relationship.
But that’s not to say there weren’t dark clouds on the horizon.
Apparently, another source of tension has been Harry’s attempts to persuade the naturally shy Miss Bonas to be at his side for a series of upcoming public events.
This comes after she attended her first official engagement with him in March, when he gave a speech at a youth charity event and they were photographed hugging. But according to one friend, Cressie has ‘freaked out
She wouldn’t put up with another Vegas-style jaunt
at the thought of being on parade — she just couldn’t bear it’.
So who is the most cut-up about the way things have turned out?
Telling, perhaps, has been the markedly different reactions from the one-time lovebirds in the wake of the split.
Judging by Miss Bonas’s solemn demeanour as she trudged to her media marketing job in London on Wednesday, dressed in a battered denim jacket, with her blonde hair unbrushed and dark circles under her eyes, the split is weighing heavy on her mind. So heavily that she has now taken compassionate leave from her job.
And what of Harry? Well, last week he enjoyed a raucous night out with mates, including England rugby star James Haskell and stockbroker Adam Bidwell. (Bidwell was on ‘that’ weekend in Vegas.)
The message from the Prince, who will turn 30 in September, to his now ex-girlfriend seemed to be that he wasn’t going to mope about pining for her. That was until Friday when he was pictured looking forlorn as he toured Elvis’ mansion Graceland in Memphis.
Since then he has reportedly contacted Cressida up to 15 times a day.
An abrupt turnaround which smacks of the immaturity that is Harry’s Achilles heel. One friend says: ‘Both Harry and Cressie are very young for their age — more l i ke 24 and 19 emotionally, if that.’
As another puts it: ‘ The trouble is they are the rather spoiled babies of their families and they both have a massive sense of entitlement. No one gives way. She doesn’t run when he calls, like most people do, and that drives him nuts.’
Another big bone of contention has been Cressida’s dream of following a
‘The trouble is they are both rather spoiled’
career in dance. She is, after all, highly trained. Having studied drama at university, she gained a diploma in dance from the edgy Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London (re-christened a rather rude name relating to the female anatomy by Harry’s chums).
Family sources say she is very proud of having been awarded a distinction when she graduated last year.
The fact she has taken a marketing job was seen by many as a sign she planned to leave her stage ambitions behind and placate those courtiers who view a career as a dancer as incompatible with being a royal bride in the making. But family sources angrily denied to us last week that Cressida has considered giving up her dreams of dancing professionally in a bid to make her more acceptable.
Speaking to the Mail, someone very close to her snapped: ‘She hasn’t given up dance to suit anybody. She hasn’t given up dance at all.
‘She simply reached the end of the diploma course and now she’s doing other things for a while.’
As if to reinforce her independence, Cressida moved into a modest flat with a girlfriend shortly before Easter.
And as well as her marketing job, she’s also doing some tutoring for her half-brother Charles Bonas, managing director of private tuition f i rm Bonas MacFarlane.
But, conversely, friends say that in a rather sweetly old-fashioned way, Cressida felt it was too early for her to move in with Harry until the relationship was more formalised.
Certainly, Cressie’s family have reacted angrily to claims in a US maga-
zine i last l t week k that th t Harry dumped d dh her because she is ‘too needy’.
But though she has been keen to come across as the polar opposite of a clingy girlfriend, throughout their twoyear relationship there has lurked the presence of another blonde, Chelsy Davy, D who h split lit with ith H Harry i in 2011 after ft seven turbulent years. Zimbab wean-born socialite and lawyer Miss Davy eventually gave Harry the brush- off after deciding once and for all that a life under the harsh glare of the public spotlight was the last thing she want- ed. Harry’s ’ friends id say he has never quite got over Chelsy, and the pair remain closely linked through their tight circle of mutual friends, which includes Guy Pelly, whose wedding Harry and his brother William attended yesterday (to save embarrassment, Miss Davy was not invited). Indeed, some in Harry’s circle raise a knowing eyebrow that Harry’s split with Cressie coincided with the emergence of pictures last weekend of 28-year- old Chelsy looking blissful with her new beau, society jeweller Charles Goode. Aside from these tensions, however, though Harry has publicly professed his desire to settle down and start a family like big brother William, in practice he’s shown precious little sign of doing so. Indeed, friends say that as the youngest child with a distinctly rebellious streak, even Harry privately admits he’s not quite convinced he’s ready for such a commitment. Others say he quite relishes the playboy tag. Like his uncle Andrew before him, his behaviour might be slightly embarrassing, but Harry apparently reasons that because he doesn’t get the privileges of being the eldest son and heir, he’s not overly keen to t ake on t he re - straints either. That s ai d, s ome think that Cressida never quite got to grips with just how much the role of consort would have impacted on her freewheeling social life and career. Meanwhile, the split will, no doubt, come as something of a blow to Cressida’s mother, colourful former Sixties It-girl Lady Mary Gaye Curzon.
Lady MG, as she is known in her aristocratic circle, has five children by three of her four husbands (Cressie’s father is husband number t hr e e , businessman Jeffrey Bonas).
She was said to be ‘doing back flips’ at the prospect of a possible engagement and marriage of her daughter and Harry. But all is not lost.
Last night, friends of the young couple were still holding out hope of a reunion, with sources predicting a the couple will hold a summit upon his return from the US.
‘I really wouldn’t take it as read that this is the end of things between them,’ said one close to both. ‘I would suggest that this is a case of them taking a breather.’
Either way, the newly single Harry will doubtless have approached yesterday’s wedding reception — which was a fancy dress event — with a new sense of abandon.
Which, if history is anything to go by, sounds like a disaster in the making.