New 'daddy' for little Hughie

It is mid-morning and Margaret Chilcott has just returned to her home in Somerset after dropping her four-year-old grandson, Hughie, off at school.

Caring for him is particularly poignant in Margaret's case: last week, Hughie's mother and Margaret's adoptive daughter, Susan - a soprano who was one of the brightest British stars of the opera world - died of cancer at the age of 40.

What makes Margaret's love for her grandson even more poignant is that, in a few days' time, she will be handing Hughie over to a man who - despite not being the boy's natural father, nor any kind of blood relative - will raise the child in London as his own. And the fact that this man is not actually Susan's husband makes the story even more compelling.

It is, we can reveal, the result of a remarkable decision that Susan Chilcott made in the weeks before she died. It is almost impossible to imagine the emotional torment, the depth of her maternal impotence, that this woman endured as she was faced with the most difficult decision of her life: who would look after Hughie when she was gone?

Stricken by breast and liver cancer, and being nursed 24 hours a day at home, Susan knew that she had to act in the short time that she had left: and she turned to her closest friend and occasional musical partner Iain Burnside, the pianist and Radio 3 presenter whom Hughie's grandmother fondly describes as "not the marrying kind".

A friend in the opera world was less coy: "It is widely given in his circle that Iain is gay. He has had girlfriends in the past but he seems to have moved to this stage in his life since then."

Together, the dying woman and her close bachelor friend came to an extraordinary agreement: Iain, in his forties and Hughie's godfather, would assume the role of his "daddy" for life.

It is an arrangement that Margaret, 74, and her husband Cyrus, 75, heartily endorse. "It is an incredibly brave thing to do," she tells me at her home in the village of Timsbury, near Bath. "To take on a child, especially when you live alone and do not have children of your own. Susan planned it with him before her death. They have been good friends, obviously just good friends, for so long.

"Hughie has never had anything to do with his natural father, and Susan told him how his godfather was going to be daddy. We are too old, being in our seventies, and Hughie needs someone to run in the park with him, to take him swimming, to care for him when we are long gone, to do the kind of things that little boys want to do. His godfather is the person to do that.

"Hughie is an incredibly bright, lively young lad and we love him absolutely. But we cannot look after him, although we will care for him when his daddy is away.

"Susan lived for Hughie. She was the kind of mother who always made him curious about the world, who would take him walking in the countryside to see the sunsets and to explain everything to him, and he needs that kind of special person to care for him."

She points to an armchair by the fireplace in her spick-and-span sitting room. "Myself and Sue were incredibly close. One day, she pulled that chair up and sat right opposite me, and she went through what she needed to do about Hughie. There wasn't anything I didn't know about my wonderful, kind daughter - and if she as a mother had taken this decision, then I as her mother would support her."

Susan - whom opera critics described as one of the "most phenomenal" sopranos of her generation - will be buried at Wells Cathedral next week. She had battled against cancer for two years. At her funeral, the opera establishment will turn out to bid her farewell, including, it is expected, Placido Domingo, a close friend who telephoned Susan constantly in her last weeks.

But it was Hughie who monopolised her thoughts. At present, the young boy is at school near to his mother's home in Blagdon, Somerset, a short drive from his grandparents. Since their daughter's death, Margaret and her husband have largely cared for him while Iain Burnside has juggled work commitments.

But from now on it is Burnside - who is in his forties, and a man Margaret constantly refers to as "Hughie's daddy" - who will be the emotional and financial provider, travelling from his home in east London before Hughie permanently moves to the capital later this year. "Iain has done this because it is what Susan wanted," a friend of his told me. "Honestly, what more could you ask of a friend and how incredible of him to do so."

Margaret tells me Iain is now the boy's legal guardian and, if all goes well, it is expected that formal adoption proceedings will start at some point. At Christmas, Hughie will begin a new school in London. He knows all this. His daddy will convert the downstairs of his home into a flat for myself and my husband so that we can travel up to London and look after Hughie when he is away.

"Before Susan died she told Hughie, 'You've got your daddy but never forget your granddad and grandma, never lose them.' And we know that won't happen. He absolutely adores his granddad, they are inseparable, and yes it will be hard not being near him all the time.

"But he won't be far and he knows that we love him so much and always will."

The unusual arrangement is in part the complicated legacy of Susan Chilcott's own family history and personal relationships.

When she died, she was still married to David Sigall, her manager and the man who first spotted her performing at the Royal Albert Hall when Susan was just 19. Before her death, friends say that the couple had drifted apart - the pressures of David being her manager and husband were too destructive, they say - but the Chilcotts have confirmed that David, Hughie's stepfather, will continue to see the boy and be involved in his upbringing.

Before she married David, Susan had a relationship with another man, an affair which - quite obviously - the Chilcotts prefer not to discuss. But out of that relationship came Hughie.

His grandmother says that the boy has known Burnside since he was a babe in arms. "He is part of the family, someone who was always there for Susan. She trusted him totally and so do we."

The Chilcotts are a quiet elderly couple: Margaret used to work in a printing works and her husband laboured in a cement factory. But the talent of their adopted daughter - a precocious talent that was evident when she was just three - has propelled them into an extraordinary world. When Susan was losing the battle against cancer, she once passed the telephone to her mother.

"It was Placido Domingo, calling to see how she was. I had no idea what to say to him. The Three Tenors were performing in Bath just a short time before Susan died and Placido Domingo invited her to watch the performance. But she was too ill so he asked her to come to the rehearsals, which she did, and it was an incredible time for her. She spoke to them all and she was alive again. The next day, Domingo called her again. He was such a support for her, contacting specialists in America to see if there was anything he could do to fight her cancer but, of course, by that stage it was just too late."

It is a tribute to the Chilcotts that they supported Susan's decision about Hughie without reservation. It is a solid emotional support that they displayed to their daughter throughout her life. They made incredible sacrifices, raising their adopted children in a neat semidetached home, and suffering money problems to propel Susan into the international opera world.

"There were times when it really was very, very hard for us," Margaret says. "We are not rich people and, when Sue was at college in London, it was very hard. But we never had any doubt that she was going to make it."

It was a confidence that was not misplaced. While Susan may not have risen to the prominence of, say, Kire Te Kanawa, from the early Nineties her professionalism and remarkable repertoire established her as a much sought-after performer in opera houses around the world. Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera House, singled her out as one of the finest British singers of her generation.

Margaret tells me that Hughie has talked constantly about his mother with his "new" daddy in the days since she died.

"After Sue's death, we were all devastated. But Hughie said something incredible to his daddy: 'I know mummy won't be coming back to see us for a while because she might be an angel but it will take time for them to stitch on her angel's wings. And when she has those angel's wings, then I know she'll come back to see us.' "

Susan Chilcott could not have put it better herself.