As he held his newborn son in his arms, Liam Payne knew he was truly in love, perhaps for the first time in his life.
With one hand holding little Bear’s neck and the other on his bottom, the singer hugged him as if he were the most precious thing in the world, just minutes after his birth at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on March 22, 2017.
She later posted the photo on Instagram, along with the words: “My close friends and family know that there are very few occasions when I am speechless…wow.”
It was a moment that Bear’s mother, singer and former X Factor judge Cheryl Tweedy, who is believed to have taken the photograph, will hold in her heart forever, now that her little boy will never see his father again. Former One Direction star Liam died Wednesday night after falling from a third-floor balcony of the CasaSur hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
He was only 31 years old. He did it all very early in life: fame at 16, fatherhood at 23, and now a terrible, senseless death before he really met his son.
Liam Payne with Cheryl Tweedy at the BRITs in 2018 before announcing their split
For Cheryl, 41, losing Liam is the latest sadness in what has been a tormenting few years for her. She had struggled to maintain the relationship between her much younger ex and her son, while Liam’s behavior became increasingly erratic.
Because Liam was far from being a traditional father and he himself admitted that he was more ‘rock ‘n’ roll’. While she regularly called Bear, he was rarely physically present in her life, although she did not shirk parental responsibility.
Because, as I can reveal today, there were some areas of life where Liam showed almost prophetic maturity and provided for Bear well.
The seven-year-old will inherit the £30million fortune Liam made during his years in the boyband and which, despite his drug and alcohol addictions, he managed to hold on to.
He was also careful when investing in property, having bought a mansion in Buckinghamshire.
Friends say that a few years ago Liam arranged for his money to go to his only son in the event of his death, even though there were often thousands of miles between them as the singer spent a lot of time in the United States. Most of their interaction came via FaceTime video calls.
“Liam had very sensible people around him for a while and he adored Bear very much,” said a source close to the late star. ‘He always wanted to do the right thing financially.
“It’s a small consolation that Bear never lacks for anything, that he at least benefits from it.”
But it will be Cheryl, supported by her loyal mother Joan, who will have to deal with the emotional fallout of Liam’s death.
Despite the sudden end of their relationship in 2018, friends say Cheryl will be devastated. Although she has been on “a few dates,” Cheryl is not publicly known to have had serious boyfriends since Liam.
While Cheryl has fiercely guarded Bear’s privacy and has never shown his face to the world, those who know him say he is an “absolutely beautiful” boy.
One adds: “Well, it would be with his genes, wouldn’t it?”
This summer, Liam described Bear as his “mini me,” before wryly adding, “Like we need any more me in the world.”
“It’s tragic that they never had a proper father-son bond,” said a friend of Liam’s.
“Liam was there, a lost soul, alone, thousands of miles from home – it’s horrible. He would always call Bear – they talked a lot to each other and Liam saw him as much as he could.
“Despite his difficulties, the full extent of which we now know, Liam loved Bear dearly.”
Liam holds his then-newborn son, Bear, in his arms in March 2017, as if he were the most precious thing in the world.
Like his fans, Cheryl was able to see the social media videos showing Liam’s increasingly worrying behavior, and would surely have been aware of his drug use.
Vehemently anti-drugs after losing a childhood friend, budding footballer John Courtney, to a heroin overdose in 2005, when he was just 21, Cheryl supported Liam in his battle with addiction.
In the book Cheryl Cole: Her Story – The Unauthorized Biography, John’s mother Angie revealed that Cheryl had written a letter to her son begging him not to destroy her life.
“That put me off drugs for life,” Cheryl later said. “That nightmare devastated all of John’s family and friends.”
They told me: ‘Cheryl did everything she could to take care of Liam even though they weren’t together. She wanted Bear to have a dad, even if he wasn’t there as much as she would have liked him to be.
When, in July last year, Liam revealed he had completed 100 days in a rehab center in Louisiana after hitting “rock bottom”, he thanked Cheryl for her support.
“More than anything, I want to thank (Bear) and his mom for giving me a little bit of freedom to go and recover at that time because I had to,” he said in a YouTube video.
Cheryl and Liam’s relationship was complicated and short-lived. They were revealed to be dating in 2016 following Cheryl’s split from French playboy husband Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini.
The end of her second marriage (she was married to footballer Ashley Cole from 2006 to 2010) had left her bruised.
Liam first met Cheryl in 2008, when he was making a bid for stardom aged 14 on The X Factor, auditioning to a cover of Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me To The Moon.
Liam with Bear where just this summer the pop star described Bear as his ‘mini me’
Pop veteran Cheryl, then 25, had been catapulted to fame six years earlier on ITV talent show Popstars: The Rivals, when Girls Aloud was formed. She was already a bona fide star, although Payne clearly wasn’t too intimidated by her celebrity, as he deliberately winked at her during her performance.
Two years later, when Liam returned to The X Factor and was put in a band that became One Direction, he was still just 16 and Cheryl was 27.
While Simon Cowell was assigned to mentor the band, she still criticized him live on television every Saturday night.
Their relationship began in 2016, when he was 22 years old and she was 32.
Although the ten-year age difference raised eyebrows, Liam’s friends said they couldn’t believe their luck. “He fell madly in love with lust for her,” said one.
They attended several showbiz events together, and Cheryl was a regular visitor to Liam’s £5million bachelor pad in Woking, Surrey.
However, Cheryl’s true desire was to be a mother. She had had many conversations with Cheryl over the years about her desire to be a mother, and in her early 30s she was eager to find the man of her dreams.
As Liam’s friends have pointed out to me, he was the “perfect baby daddy.” After all, in addition to being extremely handsome, Liam was also very rich and very kind.
As for Liam, he didn’t expect to become a father so soon. He was 23 years old, a young man about to sign a multimillion-dollar contract to become a solo artist, and he was aware that he desperately needed his female fan base. He knew that being a father with an older girlfriend could make him less attractive.
However, they gave their romance a chance and Cheryl moved into Liam’s home in Surrey, where they enjoyed preparing for their baby.
But after Cheryl gave birth, the pressure of being a young father was too much for Liam and there were some “spectacular rows”, I’m told.
In early 2018, when Bear was not yet a year old, the couple’s relationship was almost over.
There was a forced joint appearance at the BRIT Awards. Cheryl and Liam, keen to keep their split private, got dressed up and posed on the red carpet.
However, by July the game was over and they announced on social media that their romance had reached the end of the road.
Despite their separation, they both worked hard to keep their son out of the spotlight, only allowing him to see him occasionally in social media posts.
In a rare insight into their parenting dynamic, Cheryl described herself in a 2019 interview as “the strict one,” adding, “(Liam) is a lot softer than me.”
Then, around this time, Liam helped pay for a £4million house for Cheryl and Bear in the village of Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire. Liam later bought a house nearby.
A friend said, “The bear is the only beautiful thing that came out of that difficult relationship.”
Bear remains the center of Cheryl’s attention, and she is determined that he does not suffer the same dangers of fame as his father. Or even the ones she has suffered.
Aside from a brief foray into the spotlight earlier this year with the Girls Aloud reunion tour, Cheryl retreated from the public eye around the time she had Bear. Friends say that in the end she simply couldn’t cope with the fame and wanted to retire.
“In the end, Cheryl hated being talked about all the time,” a friend said. ‘Actually, she didn’t like being famous at all and that made her very unhappy.
We now know that the same thing happened with Liam. If anyone knows the dangers of celebrity, it’s Cheryl, and she’ll do everything she can to protect Bear from it all.
But the real sadness for Bear is that Dad died just when he was starting to get to know him.