lately, but I had noticed I felt nervy and tired all the time. The least little thing would set me off. For example, if I was going to work in the cab and heard on the radio that there was a traffic jam at Trafalgar Square, a busy location in central London, I would just go home. I couldn’t take the thought of sitting in traffic. Any excuse, I guess – there’s always a traffic jam at Trafalgar Square. It turned out I was suffering from anxiety.
Adding to my worries, Amy’s company had had to bear unanticipated expenses, with bills piling in for the recovery treatment, the holiday and the hotel stays Amy and Blake were racking up. If this continued, we would have a short-term cash-flow problem until Amy received her next royalty cheque. Of course, if that happened, I’d find the money somehow to fund Amy’s doctor’s bills. I was already working all the hours I could spare in the cab just to earn my living but I’d call in a favour or two if I had to. My friends would never let me down.
When I saw Amy’s accountants, there was a bill from the Causeway Retreat for ?21,000. I wasn’t going to pay that one. I was still furious with them about drugs getting into the facility while Amy and Blake were there. I’d lodged a complaint and they had promised me answers; until I got them that bill would remain unpaid. (The Causeway Retreat closed in 2010 after it was refused registration by the Care Quality Commission. In November, Twenty 7 Management, which had run it, pleaded guilty at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court to running an unlicensed hospital and was fined ?8,000, plus ?30,000 costs. District Judge David Cooper said the firm’s standards ‘would really shame a third-world country’.)
Nonetheless, that day I wrote out ?81,000-worth of cheques. Despite the incredible success of
On Saturday, 8 September, there was nothing about Amy in the newspapers. There hadn’t been a day for weeks when there wasn’t at least one story about her in the press. It was so unusual I noted it in my diary – I’d even smiled when leaving the newsagent’s.
A couple of days later the
For the first time ever, she asked me when the next record and publishing royalties were due to be paid. I told her we were expecting ?750,000 from Universal. She put her hand over the phone and told Blake what I’d said.
‘Dad, I want to go into partnership with Georgette,’ she said next. ‘I want to open a hairdressing salon for her.’
‘You must be joking,’ I said. ‘After everything that woman’s done?’
I could still hear Blake in the background telling her what to say, and she was relaying his words to me.
‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘who’s earned this money? You or him? You’re out there grafting while he’s making plans to spend your money.’ We didn’t talk for long after that. The last thing I would do was help Blake spend Amy’s money, especially if it was to fund a hairdressing salon for Georgette.
‘Amy is getting on my nerves,’ I wrote in my diary that night. ‘I’m fed up with her!’
9
HOOKED
A couple of days later Amy phoned to ask me if there was any truth in the story that I was trying to take control of her money and keep Blake away from it. I was gobsmacked. ‘No,’ I told her, and reminded her that she owned her company 100 per cent and my job was to keep an eye on things, sign the cheques and protect her interests. But one thing was for sure: if anything happened to Amy, I didn’t want Blake or Georgette to get their hands on any of her money.
‘Amy asked me if I love Blake,’ I wrote in my diary that night. ‘Is she out of her mind? I lied and told her I was fond of him but that there was too much shit with his family.’ The old saying came to mind: ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’
It seemed to me that Blake felt threatened by Amy’s close relationship with her family. He resented the time she spent with us and was trying to distance her from us. I knew what he was doing, but if you’d asked me to point out the where and when I couldn’t have put my finger on it. He was too slippery for that.
On 14 September 2007, it was Amy’s twenty-fourth birthday. Birthdays have always been a big deal in our family, so at about five o’clock I went to see her at Blakes Hotel to give her my presents. Blake was still in bed – always a bad sign – but with him in the other room, Amy and I had a lovely time together and toasted her birthday with tea and biscuits. While I was there, Raye called and said he’d arranged for Amy to go to America again at the end of the month to work with Salaam Remi.
‘That’s great news, Amy,’ I said. ‘How many new songs have you got to work with?’
Given what’d been going on, it didn’t surprise me when she said she hadn’t got anything finished, just a few ideas. I knew, though, that she would be inspired when working with Salaam.
‘Why don’t you come with us, Dad?’ she asked.
‘What? You, me and Blake? I’ll think about it.’ I had already made up my mind not to go.
Amy was in a great mood and wanted to go shopping, just the two of us, at Harrods, in Knightsbridge. I bought her a couple more presents – two sweaters that cost ?140 each, a big chunk of the money I’d earned that week in the cab – and we had a really lovely time. But somehow I got separated from her. I was searching all over the store, but I couldn’t find her. It felt like history repeating itself. Was she playing the old hiding joke on me again? I found out later that she had jumped into a cab and gone back to the hotel. When I arrived there, I found a drug-dealer in Blake and Amy’s room. I kicked him out straight away, but one of the hotel’s security guards told me he’d been there nearly every other day.
That evening Raye and I had arranged a birthday party for Amy at the Century Club in London’s Soho. All of her pals were there, with Alex, Jane, Janis and me. Tyler was meant to be bringing Amy to the party as Blake had decided not to come, which I was very pleased about. And we were enjoying ourselves, although Amy and Tyler were missing. I called her a couple of times, but couldn’t get through. I only recently found out why.
Tyler was always with Amy on her birthday, and on this occasion he particularly wanted to be with her because he was concerned otherwise that she would spend it trapped in the hotel room with Blake. She hardly ever went out now – she was constantly worried about the paps outside. It was Tyler’s mission on her twenty- fourth birthday to be with her and encourage her to go out. He found her in a great mood, perhaps brought on by the news that she’d be going to the US to record with Salaam, and she was looking forward to going out that night.
It was obvious that Blake did not want her to go out – he wanted to keep her all to himself. Given everything that had been going on, Tyler was keen to get her away from Blake for a night and find out from her exactly what had been going on in their room. He’d been worrying ever since Amy first moved into the hotel with Blake because it was then that she’d admitted to him she was smoking crack cocaine and heroin. She had promised Tyler that she would stop but, considering she spent nearly every waking moment with Blake, it was hard to imagine how that would happen.
More than the fact of her being cooped up in the hotel, it was the phone calls he took from Amy that really worried Tyler. Amy and Tyler always spoke regularly, but since she’d been staying at the hotel she was ringing him two, three or four times a day. They would be in the middle of a deep conversation and she would suddenly put the phone down. He thought she was calling him whenever Blake went out – it sounded almost as though she was trapped. That was when Tyler had become concerned about what Blake was doing.
The cab arrived and Tyler went downstairs to wait for Amy in Reception. When she didn’t show he went back up to her room. This time, when she opened the door, she was crying. She had a busted lip and makeup all down her face. She told Tyler she was really sorry but she wasn’t going out. Tyler asked her what was wrong with her face but she told him not to worry about it. He tried to force his way into the room, but Amy begged him not to and persuaded him to go.
