Amy, My Daughter

SUBJECT: My God you’re ugly.

TEXT: Are you coming to the BRITS, you savage, savage man.

I would prefer Maud, but Madonna couldn’t even fast-track the quarantine laws. I did everything, trust me. I go bananas over you.

Levi Levine

p.s. Frank Sinatra is and always will be God.

I laughed. ‘I suppose Maud’s his dog? And why’d you call yourself Levi Levine?’ But Amy had drifted off to sleep.

Despite my lectures and threats, Amy’s first urine test confirmed that she was back on drugs. I warned her again about the BRIT Awards and told her that this was her last chance. American Blake told me he was leaving again because, despite his best efforts, Amy wasn’t going to stop taking drugs. I thanked him for his support and a black cloud of despair fell over me. At least while he had been with Amy I’d had eyes and ears in the suite. Now anything could happen without me knowing about it. Later that night I had a rambling call from Amy. She told me that the prison had called her to say that Blake been cut.

‘Bloody good job. I hope it was his throat,’ I said, and hung up on her. Never mind my daughter swanning around on a beach in the Caribbean: I needed a holiday – from her.

All at once, everything began to unravel. American Blake had left, and Amy moved back into Jeffrey’s Place in Camden Town and started getting high, refusing to go to hospital. She was upset because Blake had told her that Georgette had a tape of me saying I hated Blake. A couple of days later Alex Foden’s rehab clinic told me Amy had sent a car for Foden and he was leaving. I berated Amy, but my reproaches fell on deaf ears. Her progress in getting clean had been halted and she was right back where she had been before she’d gone into Capio Nightingale. Just like that, almost two months of hard work were gone.

The BRIT Awards were the next day and I had serious doubts about Amy being there. I arrived at around six thirty and waited on tenterhooks for her appearance. She performed ‘Valerie’ with Mark Ronson and ‘Tears Dry’ with her own band. I didn’t know whether she was on drugs or not but she was a bit shaky on her feet. She got through it without a disaster, but it certainly wasn’t the best performance I’d seen her give.

Phil Taylor, a journalist at the News of the World, told me they were going to publish pictures of Amy with bruising and swelling on her face in the next edition. ‘Would you like to comment on this?’ I declined, and had a little laugh to myself: Amy had recently been diagnosed with impetigo, a highly contagious but fairly minor bacterial skin infection. She hadn’t been in a fight, as Taylor had implied. However, when I saw the picture in the News of the World, there was indeed a big swelling on her cheek so perhaps she had been in a brawl. I never found out the truth.

As always, another tabloid was there with a theory. A few days later the Sun printed a story saying that Amy had caused the swelling on her face. I didn’t dismiss this because I knew that, since she’d been with Blake, Amy had self-harmed at least once, that night at the Sanderson Hotel, although she hadn’t done so for a while. It seemed that it was usually a reaction to intense and self-inflicted pressure. According to the Sun, Amy had been smoking in a restaurant and when she was asked not to she had stubbed out the cigarette on her cheek. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to her about it. I was running out of strength.

In one of our more desperate ideas, Raye and I went to see Blake in prison to ask him to join us in a united front to get Amy clean. It was dancing with the devil, but we were reaching the end of our options. Amy had to want to get better, and Blake was one of the few people whose opinion mattered to her. However, all Blake wanted to talk about were his own problems. We left not knowing whether he would support us.

Blake started talking to Amy a lot more, but it rarely did her much good and it certainly wasn’t about getting her clean. In fact it seemed to make everything worse. In mid-March, Amy was scheduled to do a private gig at a party for Universal executives that Lucian had brought in from all over the world. That day, I went round to Jeffrey’s Place to wish her luck, but when I got there she was in a bad way. She’d been talking to Blake, who had upset her so much that she no longer wanted to do the gig.

While I was there, Amy was talking to him on and off for at least two hours. I could never understand how a prisoner was allowed to make so many calls; it seemed he was able to use the phone whenever he wanted to. In the end, thanks to Blake, Amy cancelled the gig and ruined the party for all the people who had travelled across the world to see her. She should have done the show no matter how much Blake had upset her – it was her responsibility to fulfil her obligations – and I angrily told her this.

During one visit, Blake told Raye he wanted a divorce from Amy. If only we were that lucky! He was all talk, though – he didn’t want a divorce, he just wanted to create drama. It was his way of getting attention. I always knew when Amy had been speaking to Blake, because almost every time she mentioned money, he was behind it. It seemed to me that Blake’s ideas had one thing in common: they benefited Blake.

* * *

At the end of March 2008, Amy moved out of Jeffrey’s Place to a house just around the corner in Prowse Place. Unprompted, she announced that she wanted to get clean and that she wanted to find a way of doing so quickly. I couldn’t believe my ears. I’d waited so long for this moment.

‘Right, right, listen,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some brochures in the boot of the cab outside. I’ll go down and get ’em. You can go anywhere in the world, anywhere you want.’

‘Dad, hang on a minute,’ she said. ‘I’m not getting on a plane or a boat to go to rehab… Well, I might go to Osea Island.’

I roared with laughter. Until she said, ‘I want do the detox and withdrawal here.’

I was astonished. ‘Here? Are you mad? In the house?’

I knew that would be fraught with problems, but it was her choice. At seven o’clock on 31 March, Dr Ettlinger, his practice partner Dr Christina Romete, Dr Kelleher, Raye and I met with Amy at her house to discuss the detox. It wouldn’t be easy, but Amy was confident she could do it.

Amy was to start her drug-replacement programme on 2 April 2008. Two nurses, Sandra and Brenda, were to work shifts to administer the medication. The treatment got off to a terrible start: Brenda called me to say that she was unable to administer the drugs because Amy had taken others; if she took heroin that day she couldn’t have the replacements the next day either. The next day the story was the same: Sandra called to say that she couldn’t administer the replacements because Amy had smoked heroin the previous evening. Amy told me she wasn’t happy with Sandra, probably because Sandra was doing a good job and being strict with her, but Raye and I set about finding a new nurse. Amy had to be drug-free for twelve hours before a programme could begin – which meant waiting another day before we could start again. Amy’s big recovery seemed over before it had begun.

Further complicating the drug treatment programme was the fact that Amy was supposed to start work on the new Bond movie theme tune with Mark Ronson. She hadn’t been in the studio with him since they’d worked together in New York, in December 2006. Mark was to write the music for the theme to Quantum of Solace and Amy the lyrics, but when the date to begin work rolled around in the second week of April, she was in no fit state to start. After she’d missed studio appointments with Mark, he said that he didn’t want to work with Amy while she was high, and that something needed to be done.

The studio where Amy and Mark were to work on the Bond song was in Henley, Oxfordshire, and was owned by Barrie Barlow, the sixties/seventies progressive rock band Jethro Tull’s sometime drummer. It was in the grounds of Barrie’s home. It was self-contained and comprised two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom upstairs with the studio downstairs – a perfect environment for Amy and Mark to work in. But we couldn’t get Amy there.

When Mark had been waiting for four days for Amy to show up at the studio, he started making noises about going back to the US, which would have meant the end of the Bond film for Amy. He was understanding, but he wouldn’t hang around for ever – why should he?

Amy seemed incapable of leaving her house. There was always an excuse not to go to the studio; drugs seemed all-consuming. When she wasn’t high, she was as passionate about her music as she’d ever been, but those moments were further and further apart.