Becoming a stepmother is often difficult, but it’s proving particularly challenging for fashionista Kata de Solis, who is married to Prince Philip’s godson, Ashley Hicks.
Aged 35, Kata is only ten years older than Hicks’s elder daughter, Angelica, and she has revealed the pair are struggling to bond.
‘I get on with the younger one [Ambrosia, 20], but not the older one,’ Kata discloses at a party in Mayfair. ‘She lives in New York and I think that’s better for us, because we don’t see each other that often.’
In January, Kata is due to give birth to her first child with interior designer Hicks, 54, who is Prince Charles’s second cousin.
His two daughters are from his previous marriage, to fashion designer Allegra Hicks, 56.
Kata de Solis has her face shoved into a cake at her wedding to Ashley Hicks by her stepdaughter Angelica
Ashley comforts his wife, is due to give birth to her first child with interior designer Hicks despite her still having icing all over her face
He and Kata are struggling to decide where their baby boy, to be called Caspian, will sleep.
‘The nursery is currently in an actual closet,’ Kata tells me. ‘It’s not too far off from Harry Potter under the stairs.
‘There are only two free rooms, one being the closet, which is the smallest room, and one being the studio, which is the largest, but we didn’t want to have problems with the stepchildren.
‘If we gave Caspian the largest room in the house, they wouldn’t be happy, even though they don’t live with us. They’re already not super-thrilled about the kid.
‘One of them in particular [Angelica, pictured left with her mother] has a say on everything.
Kata de Solis and Ashley Hicks attend the Dulwich Picture Gallery Summer Party (left). Angelica with her mother, Allegra Hicks (right)
‘We can’t lie about what room we put Caspian in because, at some point, Ashley will put a picture of it on Instagram and the older one will freak out.’
Kata adds: ‘I don’t know if they’ll even meet their stepbrother. The older one has been telling jokes around London about me. She jokingly said there aren’t enough stairs in our house to push me down.’ Perhaps a sign of trouble ahead was when Angelica shoved Kata’s face into her cake during high jinks at the couple’s wedding in 2015.
Kata and Ashley met through the photo-sharing website Instagram.
Ashley’s mother is Lady Pamela Hicks, daughter of the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and Kata says: ‘She hasn’t given me any parenting tips because she wasn’t a very hands-on mother. She just told me to hire a good nanny. I won’t take that approach myself.’
Thrones4U – billionaire John celebrates 65th in royal style
Boris Becker borrowed £2 million from John Caudwell after the troubled Wimbledon legend was warned he could be jailed over debts.
And the telecoms tycoon is keen to show who’s king. This weekend the billionaire co-founder of Phones 4U gave his 65th birthday party the theme Game of Thrones. Caudwell dressed as one of the kings from the sex and dragons TV drama.
‘King Caudwell,’ joked his daughter Rebekah. ‘Let the festivities begin.’ Caudwell’s girlfriend, Modesta Vzesniauskaite, a Lithuanian Olympic cyclist half his age, was his queen.
John Caudwell, the billionaire co-founder of Phones 4U (second from left, top row) gave his 65th birthday party the theme Game of Thrones
Here’s some news that will make you feel old: Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the youthful nanny of Princes William and Harry, has become a great-aunt at 52.
Tamara Warhurst, 30, daughter of Tiggy’s sister Zara, 51, has just given birth to her first child, Sienna.
It means Tiggy’s mother, Princess Anne’s formidable lady-in-waiting, Shan Legge-Bourke, is now a great-grandmother at the age of 74.
Tiggy became a surrogate mother to Wills and Harry after their parents’ divorce.
Dashing Idris Elba has spoken of how he fled to America because ‘there wasn’t enough imagination in the industry’ for a black actor to be seen as a lead in Britain.
His move to Hollywood has certainly paid dividends.
Newly filed accounts for The Wire star’s company, Green Door Pictures Ltd, through which he channels his earnings, reveal that Elba, 45, was paid £3.81 million last year.