taking drugs. I suspected she had, although I decided not to question her. I couldn’t face either of the alternatives: the lie or the truth.
Amy had a comfortable night and the following day she was given Subutex. But Dr Paul Glynne, in charge of Amy’s medical team, told me he was unhappy with the results of Amy’s CT and ECG scans. She had gunk in her lungs and possibly nodules too. The bottom line was, she could die if she didn’t change her lifestyle. It was a stark and shocking diagnosis, but I wasn’t surprised. I wondered how Amy would react to the news.
For at least a year, I’d known that Amy’s recovery wouldn’t be easy, but before the seizure, she’d been on such a good stretch that I had lulled myself into a false sense of security. This diagnosis brought me crashing down to earth. I feared, I suppose, that one day I might have to face the worst outcome of Amy’s addiction; I’d tried to pretend it wasn’t going to happen, that I wouldn’t need to consider it, but here it was. Amy could die from the misuse of drugs, and everything a father could want for their daughter might end with me in tears beside a hospital bed.
To make matters worse, Blake wouldn’t leave me alone: he was calling and texting non-stop. ‘I feel I’m out of the loop,’ one message said. ‘Tough!’ I replied. I was at the end of my tether.
Amy slept through that night, and I was back at the hospital at seven thirty the following morning. At three o’clock she and I saw Dr Romete and Dr Glynne. They were both very blunt: if she continued for one more month in her current lifestyle, she would be dead. Perhaps the seizure had been a blessing in disguise, the doctors said, and I agreed. Maybe it had been the wake-up call Amy needed. She could hear it in no more certain terms than that.
Amy was very frightened. Her hand was shaking when she clasped mine – I’d never seen her so scared before. She assured us that she was off drugs for good. But it wasn’t as simple as that.
The next day Amy felt and looked a lot better. We had a good long chat and covered a lot of ground. We talked about my mum and dad, our favourite Sinatra songs, what colour she should paint the living room in Prowse Place, who in our family made the best cup of tea – that sort of thing. I kept steering the conversation back to her getting clean, but she was smart and kept spotting it. Eventually we were both just laughing. There was further good news when Dr Glynne showed us Amy’s CAT scan results and confirmed there was no need for a biopsy.
Every day after that Amy improved, and on 22 June, six days after her seizure, the doctors allowed her out to rehearse for the forthcoming concert in honour of Nelson Mandela’s ninetieth birthday.
A couple of days later Dr Glynne told us how pleased he was with Amy’s progress. I was thrilled to hear Amy was doing well, but she wasn’t really taking her illness seriously any more. Dr Glynne had emphasized how careful she needed to be with her lungs, but as soon as he left she went out for a cigarette. The next day, she rehearsed again for the Mandela concert, and had too much to drink. There was no talking to her. All she wanted to talk about was Blake and getting him to do rehab at the London Clinic. I told her she must be crazy.
But 27 June was the sort of day that made all of the aggravation and bad times worthwhile… well, almost worthwhile. Amy’s performance at Mandela’s birthday tribute was stunningly brilliant: she looked great, she sounded fantastic and the audience loved her. Most important of all, she enjoyed herself. She didn’t drink or smoke on stage and sang two songs, ‘Rehab’ and ‘Valerie’, then took the lead vocal in the final song, ‘Free Nelson Mandela’. I don’t know how many people noticed that in ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, Amy was singing ‘Free Blakey my fella’. She hadn’t planned it, she said. It had just come to her while she was singing.
But after a fantastic high there’s always a fall, and the very next day I found out Amy had had drugs delivered to the hospital. Before they were taken away from her she had smoked a small amount of heroin. After all of the promises she had made, all of the warnings she had heard, here we were again. I didn’t know how much more I could take – I was devastated.
Perhaps the most difficult thing about loving and helping an addict, which most people who haven’t been through it don’t understand, is this: every day the cycle continues is your new worst day. When looked at from the outside it seems endless, the same thing over and over again; but when you’re living it, it’s like being a hamster on a wheel. Every day there’s the chronic anxiety of waiting for news, the horrible rush when it turns out to be bad, the overwhelming sense of
For me, this was life with Amy. If I was stopped by someone in the street and they asked how Amy was doing, I knew they wouldn’t understand if I told them what was going on. I’d learned that it’s nearly impossible to explain how this could keep happening. I’d imagined that, as they offered sympathy, they’d be wondering, How can her family let this carry on? Or, Why didn’t they lock her up until she was clean? But unless an addict wants to quit, they’ll find a way to get drugs, and as soon as they leave the rehab facility they’ll pick up where they left off.
Long before Amy was an addict, no one could tell her what to do. Once she became an addict, that stubbornness just got worse. There were times when she wanted to be clean, but the times when she didn’t outnumbered them.
Amy was meant to be playing at the Glastonbury Festival that day and I was surprised when I learned that she had turned up. I watched her performance on television. She started off okay but her voice quickly became very weak and she was drinking on stage. She wasn’t teetering about, as she usually did when she drank, but she was definitely drinking. Just before she finished her set, she went down into the crowd. They loved it and she was beaming.
Straight afterwards she was driven back to the London Clinic. We had security guys working shifts to look after her by this time and the next day I took a call from Andrew, on duty at the time: a package was on its way to Amy. I jumped in my cab, headed to the hospital and got there just in time to see a known drug-dealer with a bunch of flowers for Amy. He swore that there were no drugs in the flowers, but Andrew searched the bouquet and found a rock of crack cocaine. The dealer was immediately escorted off the premises. Amy went mad when she found out we’d intercepted the drug. But I no longer trusted her, and I told her as much. ‘You can shout and scream all you want. When you’re at home there’s nothing I can do to stop them coming round, much as I’d like to, but here in the hospital there are doors that can be locked, and security, and I’ll do anything I like to make sure that shit doesn’t get in here.’
Amy was sullen when I’d finished, but she didn’t argue back.
She left the hospital a couple of days later and went back to her home in Prowse Place. I was relieved that she agreed to my idea that she should have live-in security, and the boys took it in turns to be on call, meaning I could relax a little, knowing that someone was with Amy 24/7. I also arranged for a nurse to visit daily to administer the Subutex. ‘No more drugs, Dad,’ Amy promised, yet again, and we were back on the road to recovery. How long for, I had no idea, but I was determined that, no matter how many times Amy came off the rails, I would be there to put her back on. I know how this must look to an outsider: either I was fooling myself, willing to believe Amy time and again, seeking a little false comfort for me and the rest of her family, or I truly thought, each time she declared, ‘No more drugs, Dad’, that she was one small step closer to achieving her drug- free goal. I’ll leave you to decide which.
Andrew and Amy quickly became friends and I trusted him implicitly to care for her, which he did for the rest of her life.
But it wasn’t very long after the security guards had been employed that Amy told me she wanted them removed. That made me realize what a good job they must have been doing in keeping drugs out of the house, but I also had to face the fact that Amy still needed drugs, despite the Subutex.
‘The security is for your own good,’ I told her.
‘Well, I’m fed up with having them hanging about all the time,’ she snapped.
‘Yeah? You better get used to the idea because they’re here to stay.’
The next day Amy called me in a state of excitement to say she was having period pains, which she hadn’t had for ages. This meant her body was starting to recover and one day she might be able to have the babies she desperately wanted. I’d rather she’d discussed it with one of her girlfriends, but it shows how close we were and how much she was confiding in me.
A few days later Amy was due to fly to Madrid for a gig, but she was in a bad way when Raye arrived to pick her up. She was clearly craving drugs and wanted to cancel the gig. After much cajoling from Raye, and some members of the band, Amy changed her mind – and the performance went very well – but Raye was convinced
