day.
Raye took Amy to the appointment, but she wasn’t particularly communicative and couldn’t wait to leave. I phoned Dr Ettlinger and arranged another appointment for the following day. I would be bringing her, I told him, and would like to sit in on the consultation. I also made an appointment for Amy with Dr Pierides, the clinical psychologist; we would see him first, then go on to Dr Ettlinger. She went to both, but neither appointment proved very productive. While she was receptive to Dr Pierides, she shut down when Dr Ettlinger began to talk to her about the harm she was doing to her body. She refused to hear what he had to say.
A few days later, I called Amy’s flat in the afternoon. Alex Foden was with her and told me she’d been sleeping all day. While that wasn’t particularly unusual at the time, I decided to drive over to make sure she was okay. By the time I got there, Amy was awake, but not very coherent. After a while she came round a bit and we talked more about looking for a rehab place where she would feel comfortable.
It seemed that we were going round in circles. When Amy wasn’t high, she wanted to get clean. Then she would get high and forget she wanted to get clean. I felt that the people going in and out of the Bow flat were a bad influence on her as, quite clearly, a lot of drug-taking was going on there.
And there were constant stories in the media. I’d had a call from Alex Foden to say that Georgette had sold a story to the
What had happened was that at about four a.m. Amy had wanted a cup of tea and one of her friends had gone to the all-night garage at the top of the road to buy some milk. The flat was inside a gated community, and when Amy’s friend went out he left the front gate open by mistake. There were paps outside it day and night and they wasted no time in taking advantage of the open gate. They banged on Amy’s front door and Amy, thinking it was her friend coming back, opened it. Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash – they had pictures of Amy in her bra. So, she was not running through the streets in her underwear, simply opening her front door.
Tuesday, 4 December, was my birthday. My son Alex called me but I didn’t hear from Amy and I was too fed up to be upset. Over the next couple of days there were more pictures of Amy in the newspapers, this time with Pete Doherty. One was of them standing outside the flat in Bow, supposedly at four a.m. Just hours later Amy was meant to be visiting Blake in Pentonville; she missed the visit because she overslept. Blake might have been bad, but Doherty wasn’t much better – this time I felt sorry for Blake.
When I talked to Amy about the missed visit, she offered no excuses. I was disgusted with her and told her so. ‘You can’t let someone down like that. I was glad to walk out of there after just half an hour when we went to see him, so what must it be like being stuck in there twenty-four hours a day? You’d want your own wife to understand that and make sure she stuck to her visits.’ I couldn’t be bothered to tell her I was upset that she’d forgotten my birthday.
Later she phoned and asked me to meet her in the West End. I told her I didn’t want to see her because I was still fed up with her. The truth was I now felt that the situation was hopeless and I didn’t want to see her when I might end up saying the wrong thing.
Two days later Amy had a VO to see Blake. She made the trip this time, but got there too late and wasn’t allowed in. I had a meeting with the Outside Organization, Amy’s PR company, to discuss how we could get more positive press for her. Looking back now, it seems we didn’t do very well.
Not long after that meeting an open letter to Amy from Janis was published in the
When I next met with Drs Ettlinger and Pierides they were both very concerned about Amy’s health. At this stage I was still trying to persuade her to go to rehab but nothing was agreed or accomplished. She was very thin and both doctors commented on it. Amy herself said that during her most recent visit to Blake he’d told her she should try to put on some weight and stop taking drugs.
I went home feeling depressed. Even a call from Raye to say that Amy had been nominated for six Grammy Awards didn’t lighten my mood. ‘They want her to perform at the ceremony in LA on the tenth of February 2008,’ he added.
‘What did she say when you told her?’ I asked.
‘She was really excited, Mitch. She really wants to do it. She couldn’t believe she’d been nominated for so many awards. I haven’t heard her sound so happy in ages.’
‘Hang on a minute, Raye,’ I said. ‘She’s not going to get the visa, is she?’
Raye replied, ‘She says she’s going to get clean in time.’
‘Well, that won’t happen.’
I rang Amy to congratulate her. She was really, really happy about the Grammys, and we ended up having quite a long conversation – one of our best in ages.
‘Who’d have thought, when you were sitting in your bedroom in Spain playing that little guitar, those songs you were writing then, you’d be going on to win Grammy Awards? It’s unbelievable, Amy.’
‘I tell you what, Dad…’ She went quiet. For once in her life Amy was stuck for words. ‘Do you know what, Dad? This is just the beginning. I need to start writing again.’
I got off the phone and thought, Well, let’s see, shall we? One step at a time – she’s got to get there first.
Shortly after this, though, Amy officially became a suspect in Blake’s case. This had come about because Blake had admitted he was going to pay ?200,000 to James King so that he wouldn’t testify in the GBH case. Blake obviously didn’t have that kind of money and the only person it could have come from was Amy. As I’ve said, Amy couldn’t have got that kind of money out of her account without a counter-signature so, although I was worried about this latest development, I knew nothing would come of it.
As Amy was now a suspect in the case, she was not allowed to be physically with Blake any more: their visits had to take place with a sheet of glass between them. Amy was very upset – I had tried to protect her from the details of what was going on, but there was no avoiding this. Amy’s solicitor advised again that we should prepare a statement and take it to the police, rather than waiting for her to be arrested, which, in his view, was imminent. A couple of days later he arranged for Amy to attend Shoreditch Police Station in east London where she was arrested. It’s common practice, under English law, for a suspect to be arrested before they can be questioned by the police, and Raye, who had accompanied her, was also arrested after an altercation with paps outside the police station. The charges against him were subsequently dropped. After questioning, Amy was released on bail without restrictions, and when I spoke to her later she was coping much better than I’d expected.
I suggested that she should consider going on holiday with some of her friends while we tried to sort everything out. Surprisingly, she agreed and called me later to say that she would like to go to Mustique with Tyler, then rang back to say she’d like to take Juliette and Lauren too. I was delighted and began to make the arrangements.
Tyler was a good influence, and I knew that Juliette and Lauren simply wanted the best for Amy. They had always been close to her, but recently, because they disagreed with the way Amy was dealing with her drug problem, their relationship had suffered. I suppose you could say their solution was tough love. They seemed to think that Amy should be locked up in rehab, but Amy would never have gone along with that – and I’d never thought things were that simple. I’d always favoured the supportive approach, encouraging her in her desire to quit and comforting her through the bad times. Again and again Amy had shown that she’d get drugs if she wanted them.
It didn’t matter whether my approach or theirs was right. I just wanted my Amy to get better – and I was happy that she wanted to take her friends on holiday. On 20 December I gave Amy four thousand pounds for her
