Liam Payne’s girlfriend Kate Cassidy was on hand at the late star’s funeral to say a final goodbye, just over one month after his tragic death.
Cassidy, 25, attended Payne’s funeral on Wednesday, Nov. 20, arriving with the couple’s friend Damian Hurley. She was dressed in all black and wore black sunglasses.
She joined Payne’s family and friends — including his One Direction bandmates Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan — in laying the singer to rest at a service held in a 12th-century church in the English countryside northwest of London.
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Cassidy and the “Strip That Down” singer were first linked in October 2022, and though they largely kept their relationship out of the spotlight, he occasionally appeared in photos and videos Cassidy shared to Instagram and TikTok.
Shortly after Payne’s death on Oct. 16, Cassidy revealed that the two had “manifested our lives together” just weeks earlier, posting a note on Instagram Payne had written that said he hoped to get engaged and marry Cassidy within the year.
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“I keep your note close, even though you told me not to look at it. It said, ‘Me and Kate to marry within a year/engaged & together forever 444,'” she wrote in a message featured in her Instagram carousel.
“My heart is shattered in ways I can’t put into words. I wish you could see the huge impact you’ve had on the world, even as it feels so dark right now,” she wrote. “You are — because I can’t say were — my best friend, the love of my life, and everyone you touched felt just as special as I did. None of this feels real, and I can’t wrap my head around this new reality of not having you here. I’m struggling to figure out how to live in a world without you by my side. Together, we got to be kids again, always finding joy in the smallest things.”
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She concluded the post by expressing her love for Payne. “Liam, I know we’ll be together forever, but not in the way we had planned,” she shared. “You’ll always be with me. I’ve gained a guardian angel. I will love you for the rest of my life and beyond, carrying our dreams and memories with me everywhere I go.”
Hurley, the 22-year-old model/filmmaker son of Elizabeth Hurley, also expressed his grief for Payne, calling him “one of the sweetest men I’ve ever met” in an Instagram post.
“a devastating loss. thinking of and sending love to Liam’s family, especially my beautiful friend @kateecass ❤︎⋆｡ﾟ☾,” he wrote.
A host of Payne’s other friends attended his funeral, including Simon Cowell, who helped launch One Direction’s career on The X Factor in 2010, James Corden and ex Cheryl Cole, the mother of his 7-year-old son Bear.
Payne died on Oct. 16 in Buenos Aires, Argentina after falling from the balcony at his hotel. A preliminary autopsy report found he sustained multiple “internal and external” injuries in the fall, and the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office later said that he was “not fully conscious or was experiencing a state of noticeable decrease or loss of consciousness at the time of the fall.”
