Cheryl's selfless promise to Liam Payne over Bear after marriage was 'ruined'

Cheryl and late One Direction star Liam Payne split when son Bear was just one year old and came to an amicable agreement about how he would be raised

Settling down and starting a family had long been a dream for Cheryl, and her wish finally came true when she met Liam Payne and gave birth to their son Bear in 2017.

Sadly, they split when he was just one year old. And Bear, now seven, is facing life without his beloved dad after Liam tragically plunged to his death from from the third floor balcony of his hotel room in Argentina. He was just 31 years old. Today, his heartbroken friends and family will gather to bid a final farewell to the star at his private funeral in the Home Counties.

Despite having been separated from Liam, Cheryl shared her devastation over his harrowing death, writing on Instagram: "As I try to navigate this earth shattering event, and work through my own grief at this indescribably painful time, I'd like to kindly remind everyone that we have lost a human being.

"Liam was not only a pop star and celebrity, he was a son, a brother, an uncle, a dear friend and a father to our 7 year old son. A son that now has to face the reality of never seeing his father again."

Like Cheryl, Liam had longed to be a father and was determined to have a quiet life with Cheryl and Bear, five, but things didn't quite pan out that way. The couple split amid Liam's quest to establish himself as a solo artist following One Direction's hiatus. Announcing their separation in joint statements, over the coming months and years, both gradually pulled back the veil to reveal exactly what had gone wrong, and Cheryl confirmed that Liam's work was a big part of it.

"So he wanted to settle down and have a family and not do the solo thing," she told Sunday Times Magazine. "Then we encouraged him to do that. And then it didn't work out." Admitting Liam may have felt somewhat excluded by her intense bond with the baby, when asked if he changed his mind about wanting domestic bliss, she responded, "You'll have to ask him that."

For Liam's part, he said that Bear's arrival 'ruined' their relationship, but for 'all the right reasons', and has explained that problems first arose when the pressure of fatherhood knocked him for six. "Becoming a dad at such a young age, it's such a difficult thing," he said in his documentary, Ant Middleton and Liam Payne: Straight Talking. "And I think I built fatherhood up so much in my head that it kind of messed me up to start with. I started in a bad place with it," he continued.

"I think it spooked me out early on, and I was just worried I would not be enough to look after the both of them. They're so important to me - Cheryl as well."

The second issue, he said, was that he didn't 'understand' what Cheryl was going through as a new mum. "The one thing I was missing as a man in the relationship I had, was a level understanding about what she was feeling about stuff," he admitted. "While I want to protect her, there's a big part of her that wants to protect me."

Liam was dating British-American influencer Kate Cassidy before his shock death, but insisted that Cheryl would always be the number one person in his life.

"She's one of the most, if not the most, important people in my life. I'm lucky I have someone who understands what I'm going through," he added.

Like Liam, Cheryl was just a teenager when she found fame on a reality show, winning a place in Girls Aloud on Popstars: The Rivals in 2002. She first met Liam in 2008 when he was a 14-year-old hopeful on The X Factor and she was a judge. Their paths crossed again in 2015 when he returned to perform with One Direction and the rest is history.

Cheryl has credited Liam with being the only man not to have cheated on her. Like Liam, she harboured no ill will, previously insisting: "There's no animosity whatsoever. We are learning all the time. We're just like any other couple that have gone through this, but we have a few more eyes watching us... Just a few."

She told The Sun in 2019: "I'm actually really happy that we can be the way we are. We love and care about each other a lot and we share a child. It's really important that we're able to have a very healthy good relationship." She added: "We're going to be in each other's lives forever so we've got to figure it out and be grown-up about it."

And Liam once gave fans an insight into their co-parenting agreement. The exes lived close to each other, and while Liam spent regular quality time with Bear, he told how Cheryl had generously given him free rein to do what he wants.

"She is the best mum in the world. I couldn't ask for someone better," he told Logan Paul's podcast Impaulsive. "I get to take my son to school one or two times a week and it's the best thing. The relationship we have now as friends has only grown more.

"We broke up for a reason and now she gives me full autonomy of my life and to do what I do and I know he's [Bear's] taken care of. He is all she cares about and I couldn't ask for more. They live like three minutes from my house. I always glue myself to where he is. My life now is his. My money is his. He's a lovely, lovely boy. We've been blessed."