Amy, My Daughter

trip to Mustique. She was set to leave on 28 December with Tyler and Juliette; in the end Lauren didn’t go.

Christmas Day was soon upon us and we were all due to go to my sister Melody’s house for lunch. Alex Foden was supposed to be bringing Amy, but by two o’clock they hadn’t arrived and my calls to Amy and Alex Foden went straight to voicemail. I had predicted that Amy wouldn’t come to Mel’s and assumed she was asleep after, probably, being high the previous night. I tried to put it to the back of my mind but at seven o’clock, when there was still no word, I drove to her flat in Bow.

When I knocked on the door, there was no answer, but I peered through the window and could see her lying on the couch in the living room. I banged on the glass again – nothing. I was on the point of breaking the door down or smashing the window when one of Amy’s friends came out of the bedroom. She woke Amy and opened the door. Amy couldn’t understand what all of the fuss was about and was a bit tetchy with me. At times like this, it became frighteningly apparent that she had no idea how much worry she caused all of us.

Three days later, Amy, Juliette and Tyler flew to Barbados, where they spent a few days, then travelled on to Mustique. I hoped she would be okay and have a good holiday. I felt relieved that other people now had the responsibility of looking after her. That might sound a horrible thing to say but twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, was exhausting me when I still had to earn my living and be a husband to Jane and a father to Alex. I began to relax – until I took a call from a ‘freight company’ to say that Amy had left her bag at the airport and they wanted a forwarding address in Barbados. The lengths the paps will go to for a story…

As the year ended, a number of clinics all over the world contacted me to tell me they could help Amy. Each said they were right for Amy. One even guaranteed that their treatment would rid Amy of her addiction. I gave Dr Ettlinger the details and he told me that, although he was sceptical of so-called guarantees, he would look into it.

Not long ago, I would have dismissed all such claims, but times were getting harder by the day. It was difficult to imagine surviving another year like the last. My diary entry for the last day of 2007 reads: ‘Frank now Platinum, meaningless unless Amy gets better. Please God help me to make 2008 a better year for my darling daughter.’

12 ‘AGAIN, SHE’S FINE, THANKS FOR ASKING’

I resolved that 2008 would be the year we helped Amy get clean. Heroin and crack cocaine must become a thing of the past. I knew that everyone who cared about Amy’s wellbeing felt the same and, with Blake still in prison, we had a fighting chance of making it happen.

New Year’s Day started well, with an early-morning call from Amy in Mustique, where she was staying with the singer Bryan Adams, whom she’d met in London some time before. She sounded fine and told me she was having a lovely time. However, Raye had heard a different story. Amy told him she wanted to go back to Barbados, where she could stay with Salaam Remi’s father, but Raye dissuaded her – he was convinced she only wanted to go back to score drugs. Amy didn’t tell me how much she was suffering. I know she really struggled on Mustique, but she was a fighter and stuck out the terrible pains of withdrawal. Bryan Adams was concerned about her weight – she was being sick a lot.

Her trip lasted about a week. Then Amy decided she wanted to come back to show Blake that she was off heroin, but I didn’t believe her. It was more likely that she wanted to come home specifically to get some heroin. When she arrived, I arranged for Dr Ettlinger to examine her, and he told me that, in his opinion, she would go back to drugs the minute she could get hold of them. We were back to square one.

Meanwhile it came to my attention – it doesn’t matter how – that Amy owed a certain drug-dealer twelve thousand pounds and this dealer was going to the Bow flat to collect. I made sure I was there when the dealer arrived and I said, in no uncertain terms, that neither I nor Amy would be paying a penny. There was no argument and the dealer left. When Amy found out, she was angry with me because I had cut off one of her lines of supply.

‘Too bad,’ I said. You’ve got to be cruel to be kind. The way I saw it, it was one less person Amy could buy from. I took out my frustration with Amy and her behaviour on the people I found hanging about the flat and probably got too much enjoyment from kicking them out forcefully. I thought it would do Amy no harm to see how angry she made me sometimes.

She needed any distraction from drugs that we could give her, so we were all excited by the news that Raye had arranged for Amy to sing the title song for the next Bond film, Quantum of Solace. Amy was very excited about it. She’d really liked Casino Royale, and immediately started making plans to work with Mark Ronson, who would be writing the music. That was exactly what she needed: to start thinking about music again – a new project for her to work on. I wondered how she’d deal with deadlines and a brief that she had to fulfil.

The hope was that we’d be able to make that distraction last long enough to keep her clean for her drug- test. Dr Ettlinger felt that Amy was improving but he decided to prescribe Valium to help her relax, which she was finding harder and harder to do. However, he explained that there was a problem: after 15 January Amy could not take any drugs at all, including prescription drugs, if she was to pass the drugs test to enable her to get her visa to enter the US to perform at the Grammy Awards the following month. The appointment for the drugs test had been made for 22 January.

Although it was only for a week that Amy couldn’t have any medication, it would seem like a lifetime to her. I didn’t know if she could do it. The only thing keeping me optimistic was a conversation I’d had with Tyler. He’d been with her through her withdrawal in Mustique and was encouraged by her efforts to quit drugs. He agreed to keep an eye on her.

On the drive home I stopped several times, for Amy to get out of my cab to buy sweets, a mobile phone and finally fish and chips for both of us. She even bought portions for the paps that were following us. Each time she was mobbed by fans. It was great to know that they saw her as herself and not as the Amy the tabloids had created. It was hilarious and Amy was on top form. We had a lot of laughs – at one point I was laughing so much I had to stop the cab. Amy jumped out of the seat next to me and into the back, as if she was a passenger.

‘Where to, madam?’ I called over my shoulder, playing the game.

‘To my flat in Camden Town, my good man, and don’t spare the horses.’

‘To Jeffrey’s Place?’

‘It’s mine, not Jeffrey’s,’ she said, and I laughed again. This was my girl, the way she used to be, before drugs. I went home feeling uplifted for the first time in ages. Maybe she could pull it off, after all.

A day or two later I heard from Tyler that Amy had taken drugs. When I confronted her, she admitted it was true and told me Alex Foden had given them to her. I was furious but kept my temper in check and did nothing about Foden. The next day was meant to be the start of the drug-free week and there was no way round it. If she failed the test, she wouldn’t be admitted to the US. My hopes dimmed again when I went to see her at the Bow flat and, lo and behold, Geoff was there again.

The following morning Raye landed me with a bombshell. The Sun newspaper had told him they had pictures and videos of Amy taking drugs. Upsetting as this was, I tried to stay calm: this just confirmed what everyone already knew.

On the day we’d scheduled for the US drug test, the Sun published the story, complete with pictures of Amy apparently taking crack cocaine. To make matters worse, the video had been set up by two of Blake’s friends who had sold it to the Sun. I expected Amy to be mortified, but she maintained, in the face of all the evidence, that she hadn’t been set up, and said, ‘What do I care? Everybody thinks I take drugs anyway, Dad.’

After the story appeared, I was inundated with calls from the press. I naturally wanted to protect my daughter and said that Amy was now in treatment and that we were all proud of her progress.

We postponed the US drugs test until the following week but, drugs test or not, we had to get Amy focused. She was scheduled to perform a concert in Cannes, France, on 24 January; Jane and I were to go with her. However, in the wake of the photos surfacing in the Sun, Raye and I met with Lucian Grainge, at Universal Records. He told me he would not allow Amy to perform. Furthermore, unless Amy went into