'My toyboy stood by me'

."Every day we'd all walk across Central Park and we'd get to the hospital and the children could watch television while I got zapped and then we'd walk back across the park. It was incredible family time, which you can forget normally - you zoom in from work, quick cuddle, put them down, be quiet - that's the sort of level of focus they got. So instead of it being a difficult six weeks, it was glorious."

She has known Der Gregorian for two years, since they met on the West End run of the Woman in White (he was in the cast). He is 25 (interestingly, she wouldn't tell me that; he lets it slip later when he meets us in the local park with her children - "What? I'm not ashamed," he says when she shoots him a despairing look) and they had only been a couple for a few months before she was diagnosed with cancer.

It must be an intense time for any couple, let alone a new relationship. "He was just brilliant, he stuck by me," she says. "He says any man would do it but I don't know. He came to every single hospital appointment and we had about 80 in all.

"He makes me laugh so much. When he was pushing me out in a wheelchair after my surgery he said: 'God, I know there's an age gap but I didn't know I'd be pushing you around in a wheelchair this early on.'" She laughs. "Times which should have been really scary, I was laughing. He helped me so much. He's a very funny man."

But it has changed their future. Instead of choosing chemotherapy (which, she was warned, might affect her lungs - a disaster for a singer) Friedman opted for a drug treatment using Lupron.

"It basically puts you through the menopause; it shut down my ovaries. Even though the likelihood of me having another child was slight, Adrian really wants children and we had to face that. If we stay together, and I hope we do, we'll think about adopting. But it's a big thing for a young man to face."

She is clearly wary of making a fuss about their age gap - she says she has been mistaken for his mother before but when I see them together later there's nothing odd about them. Calm and solid, he seems older than he is, she seems younger, so they meet in the middle.

"I am really happy," says Friedman. "I'd hate to be thought of as an ageing singer trying to stay young with a toyboy. It's just not true. I've always had older boyfriends but we met and we liked each other and we got to know each other. That's how it works with any couple, that's how it worked with us."

Friedman was born in Switzerland, where her father, Leonard Friedman, an outstanding violinist, was working. When he became leader of the Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra, the family moved to Germany but her parents separated and her mother Clair brought the children - Maria, her older brother, Richard, and younger sisters, Sonia and Sarah - back to England. It was an acrimonious divorce and Maria's mother had to bring up four children alone.

So was it important for Friedman to create a stable family of her own? "It was everything." She had known her first husband, Roland Brine, since they were children and it was Brine, years later when he landed a job as a dancer in the musical Oklahoma!, who persuaded the producers to cast Friedman in the chorus.

By her mid-30s, Friedman's career was well established but her marriage to Brine ended. She had her first son, Toby, with Jeremy Sams, a writer and composer, soon afterwards but that relationship didn't last, nor did her next with Oleg Poupko, a film cameraman, and the father of Alfie. "It sounds like I've been a right slapper, but they've all been serious relationships," she says.

She now considers Sams and Poupko friends and didn't want her children to
suffer her experience of not seeing her father for many years. "For my children's sake, it was essential to have them welcome in the house, however painful it was," she says. "I did that from day one. I was so proud when my children were able to hug their fathers in front of me without them thinking: 'Will Mummy mind?' "

Friedman goes back to New York this week for a month to perform at the legendary cabaret venue, the Carlyle, and she has just been nominated for a prestigious Drama League award in America for her performance in The Woman in White, a vindication after all the mutterings that the show closed earlier than expected partly because of her illness.

Friedman's prognosis is good, although she knows she has a long way to go (oncologists consider five years free of the disease as the all-clear). "I have moments, particularly when I get aches and pains when I worry, but I tend to bat them out.

"I'm going to be checked at the end of May to see if I'm in remission. I'm not going to enjoy that day very much because I'll have to focus on it. If I am in remission then there's every chance I can stay in remission. If I'm not, then we'll deal with it."