The seven-year-old who will inherit Liam Payne’s vast fortune: Incredible sum he left Bear is revealed by KATIE HIND – and why Cheryl Tweedy retreated from public life

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.

The singer supported the little bear’s neck with one hand and the other on his buttocks. The singer hugged him like he was the most precious thing in the world just minutes after his birth at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on March 22, 2017.

He later posted the photo to Instagram, along with the words: “My close friends and family know that there are very few moments when I am left speechless… wow!”

It was a moment that Bear’s mother, singer and former Liam, the former One Direction star, died on Wednesday evening after falling from a third-floor balcony at the CasaSur hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He was only 31. He did everything so early in life: fame at 16, fatherhood at 23, and now a horrible, senseless death before he really got to know his son well.

For Cheryl, 41, the loss of Liam is the latest grief in an agonizing number of years for her. She struggled to maintain the relationship between her much younger ex and their son as Liam’s behavior became increasingly erratic.

Because Liam was far from a traditional father, and he himself acknowledged that he was more ‘rock ‘n’ roll’. Although he called Bear regularly, he was rarely physically present in his life – although he did not shy away from parental responsibility.

Because as I can reveal today, there were some areas in life where Liam showed almost prescient maturity, and he took good care of Bear.

The seven-year-old is set to inherit the £30million fortune Liam earned during his boyband years and which he managed to hold on to despite his drug and alcohol addictions.

He was also cautious about investing in property, having bought a country house in Buckinghamshire.

Friends say Liam made arrangements several years ago for his money to go to his only child in the event of his death, despite often being thousands of miles apart as the singer spent a lot of time in America. Most of their interaction took place via video calls on FaceTime.

“Liam had very sensible people around him for a while and he was so fond of Bear,” says a source close to the late star. “He always wanted to do what was right for him financially.

‘It is a small consolation that Bear will never want to miss anything, that he will at least benefit from it.’

But it will be Cheryl, supported by her loyal mother Joan, who will have to deal with the emotional fallout from Liam’s death.

Despite the sudden end to their relationship in 2018, friends say Cheryl will be devastated. Although she has had “a few dates,” it is not publicly known that Cheryl has had a serious boyfriend since Liam.

Although 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” little boy.

One adds: ‘Well, he would be with his genes, wouldn’t he?’

Just this summer, Liam described Bear as his ‘mini-me’, before wryly adding: ‘As if we needed any more me in the world’.

“It’s tragic that they never had a good father-son bond,” said a friend of Liam’s.

‘Liam was there, a lost soul, alone, thousands of miles from home – it’s terrible. He always called Bear; they talked a lot and Liam saw him as much as he could.

‘Despite his problems, the full extent of which we now know, Liam loved Bear so much.’

Like his fans, Cheryl could have seen the social media videos detailing Liam’s increasingly worrying behavior and would certainly have been aware of his drug use.

Cheryl was fiercely anti-drugs after losing a childhood friend, budding footballer John Courtney, to a heroin overdose in 2005 when he was just 21, and 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 her son a letter begging him not to destroy his life.

“It put me off drugs for life,” Cheryl said later. “That nightmare devastated John’s entire family and friends.”

I’m told: ‘Cheryl did her best to care for Liam even though they weren’t together. She wanted Bear to have a father, even though he wasn’t there as much as she might have wanted.’

When Liam revealed last July that he had spent 100 days in rehab in Louisiana after hitting rock bottom, he thanked Cheryl for her support.

‘More than anything I want to thank you [Bear] and his mother for giving me a little bit of freedom at that moment to get better, because I had to,” he said in a YouTube video.

Cheryl and Liam’s relationship was complicated and short-lived. In 2016, it was revealed that they were dating following Cheryl’s divorce from French playboy husband Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini.

The end of her second marriage – she was previously married to footballer Ashley Cole from 2006 to 2010 – had left her bruised.

Liam had first met Cheryl in 2008 when he made a bid for stardom on The X Factor at the age of 14, auditioning with a version of Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me To The Moon.

Pop veteran Cheryl, then 25, had shot to fame six years earlier on the ITV talent show Popstars: The Rivals, when Girls Aloud was formed. She was already a bona fide star – although Payne clearly wasn’t too impressed with her celebrity, as he pointedly gave her a cheeky wink during his performance.

Two years later, when Liam returned to The X Factor and was placed in a band that became One Direction, he was only 16 and Cheryl was 27.

While Simon Cowell was appointed as the band’s mentor, she still criticized him live on television every Saturday night.

Their relationship started in 2016, when he was 22 and she was 32.

Although the ten-year age difference raised eyebrows, friends of Liam said he couldn’t believe his luck. “He fell head over heels with lust for her,” said one.

They attended several showbiz events together, and Cheryl was a regular visitor to Liam’s £5 million bachelor pad in Woking, Surrey.

However, Cheryl’s real desire was to become a mother. I 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 her dream man.

As friends of Liam’s have told me, he was the “perfect baby daddy.” After all, Liam was not only extremely handsome, but also very rich and very kind.

As for Liam, he didn’t expect to become a father so soon. At 23, he was a young man about to sign a multi-million pound deal to become a solo artist, and he was aware that he desperately needed his female fanbase. He knew that fatherhood with an older girlfriend might make him less attractive.

Nevertheless, they gave their romance a chance and Cheryl moved to Liam’s home in Surrey, where they happily prepared for their baby.

But after Cheryl gave birth, the pressure of being a young father became too much for Liam and there were ‘spectacular arguments’, I was told.

By early 2018, with Bear yet to reach his first birthday, the couple’s relationship was all but over.

There was a forced joint appearance at the BRIT Awards. Cheryl and Liam, keen to keep their split private, dressed up and posed on the red carpet.

But by July, the game was over and they announced on social media that their romance had reached the end of the road.

Despite their split, both worked hard to keep their son out of the spotlight, only showing occasional glimpses of him in social media posts.

In a rare insight into their parenting dynamic, Cheryl described herself as “the strict one” in a 2019 interview, adding, “[Liam] is much softer than me’.

Around that time, Liam helped pay for a £4million house for Cheryl and Bear in the Buckinghamshire village of Chalfont St Peter. Liam later bought a house for himself nearby.

A friend said: ‘Bear is the only beautiful thing that came out of that rocky relationship.’

Bear remains Cheryl’s focus, and she is determined that he will not suffer the same pitfalls of fame as his father. Or indeed those she suffered.

Apart from a brief foray into the spotlight earlier this year with the Girls Aloud reunion tour, Cheryl removed herself from the public eye around the time she had Bear. Friends say that in the end she just couldn’t handle the fame and wanted to retire.

“In the end, Cheryl hated being talked about all the time,” said a friend. ‘She actually didn’t like being famous at all and that made her very unhappy.

‘We now know the same was the case for Liam. If anyone knows the pitfalls of celebrity, it’s Cheryl, and she will do everything she can to protect Bear from them.’

But the real sadness for Bear is that Dad died just as he met him.