Amy, My Daughter

A few days later Blake was quoted in the newspapers as saying, ‘When I see Amy, I’m going to take her knickers down.’ I wanted to kill him when I read that.

When Amy left the London Clinic she still hadn’t agreed to pay Blake’s fees, so he was pestering me instead. He texted, ‘Can we be pals?’ I replied, ‘No.’ He’d been trying to speak to Amy as well, but she wouldn’t take his calls, which I was very pleased about. If Blake didn’t find some way of paying his fees in the next couple of days he’d return to prison. Sadly, the day before he was due to be sent back, Amy paid the fees, saying she owed him that and calling his rehab a ‘hotel stay’. At least she wasn’t deluded.

She seemed to be staying off the drugs still, but I was getting lots of calls from Amy’s friends about her drinking. She’d been dancing in the streets of Camden in the early morning, and American Blake said it was the worst he’d seen her in months. I called Amy to talk about it, but she shouted at me, so I hung up on her.

A few days later Amy had another lapse. She had locked herself out of Prowse Place and gone to stay at Jeffrey’s Place instead. My heart sank: every drug-user in Camden seemed to know where that place was. Later Amy admitted that she had taken drugs when she was there, but she assured me it had been a one-off. I wasn’t so certain.

The rollercoaster continued a few days later when Amy was on top form and making me laugh a lot. I’d been foolish enough to allow someone to persuade me to have a Botox injection in my forehead – I couldn’t move my eyebrows for three days afterwards. Amy sighed, looked at me and said, ‘I don’t want you wasting your money on drugs, Dad.’ She had a great sense of humour, and when she was in that sort of mood she enjoyed my old stories of growing up in the East End. For those few hours, drugs, Blake and all of the other problems we were dealing with were a million miles away. It was just like it used to be. That night I wrote in my diary, ‘I really, really think this time we are near journey’s end with the drugs. I pray that I’m right.’

The next day Amy spoke to Blake on the phone and went on a bender, drinking in several Camden pubs with whoever was in there; she was in such a bad way she ended up spending the night at the London Clinic as she couldn’t stop throwing up. Blake was calling everyone to find out where Amy was. He called me, but of course I wouldn’t tell him. The last thing we needed was Blake pestering Amy at this crucial stage in her recovery.

The following day Blake was in court for his sentencing appeal hearing. His appeal was rejected and I have to say I was thrilled, but I knew this wasn’t the end. That night I wrote in my diary, ‘He called me and said that he would leave Amy if it would save her – normal shit from him, but I do believe that things are coming to a head with him. Although at the hospital Amy showed me a letter he sent her. No mention of divorce, he said that they were like Bonnie and Clyde and destined to be together for ever.’ Blake was telling Amy one thing, and me another. This was far from over.

The next day I got a call from him: he asked if we would help him out financially to rent a property. I told him I would only do that if he started divorce proceedings. He assured me he would and said his solicitor would contact us to confirm.

I was still looking at properties for Amy as part of the effort to get her out of Camden Town. That day I’d been with Amy’s friend, and fellow singer, Remi Nicole and Jevan to see a beautiful house in Hadley Wood, Hertfordshire, and I showed her the brochure with all the pictures. At last Amy became animated, and my reward for weeks of house-hunting was a lovely cuddle. ‘It looks perfect, Dad.’

Shortly after this Blake was interviewed in the News of the World. I thought he would finally admit that he was divorcing Amy, but in many ways he went further than I could have hoped. He was quoted saying:

‘I dragged Amy into drugs and without me there is no doubt that she would never have gone down that road. I ruined something beautiful. I made the biggest mistake of my life by taking heroin in front of her. I introduced her to heroin, crack cocaine and self-harming. I feel more than guilty.’

He had admitted he had turned Amy into a junkie, but there was no mention of him divorcing her. Instead, he put the ball in her court:

‘I will do anything for her – and that includes walking away. If Amy wants a divorce I’m not going to fight her for anything. It’s going to be the saddest day of my life.’

Blake was trying to portray himself as a martyr and there was no mention of how well Amy was doing in her battle to get clean.

The same day I received the following text from him:

You are trying to buy your daughter’s divorce. Stop hiding Amy’s money. I want a contract.

He was after something in writing – I assume about the property he wanted my financial help with – before he’d agree to a divorce. I texted him back telling him not to contact me again.

Amy was in a terrible way after she saw that article, stomping around and banging doors. Andrew told me she had arranged for a drug-dealer to visit her later, but I managed to put a stop to it. She was in complete and utter denial, insisting Blake hadn’t actually said the words printed in the News of the World, that he’d been misquoted and they were the words of the journalist. When I asked her how she knew that, she said Blake had told her.

I had no choice but to show Amy the text I had received from Blake. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, darling, but you’ve got to know the truth.’

She was stunned and just stared at the words on my phone, trying to make sense of what was going on. I think it was then that it finally sank in. It was then that she realized Blake had been lying to her and that all he was interested in was her money. It was a hard blow and I feared she might resort to drugs in an attempt to ease the pain.

Eventually she spoke: ‘I love him, Dad. I’ll love him no matter what.’ This worried me, but she went on, ‘I’m stronger now, and what he says to you only makes me want to get clean and stay clean. Then I can help him get clean as well. It’s what I want to do.’

I never understood why Amy was so in love with Blake. It wasn’t as if he’d brought much good into her life, or so it seemed to me. Just drugs and misery. Maybe she’d wanted to experiment with things, as a lot of people do in their early twenties, but she chose the wrong man to do it with: he took her down a path she couldn’t come back from easily. It’s the one thing I never got clear in my head about my daughter. I like to think I knew Amy as well as anyone in the world; I could relate to so much of her because she always reminded me of myself. But this was the one part of her that didn’t make sense to me, ever.

Sure enough, as soon I left, Amy and Blake made up and she told him to come home when he got out of rehab.

* * *

By the beginning of December Amy was back at the London Clinic and I learned that Blake had failed a drugs test at rehab. We were told he would be sent back to prison, but the next I heard was from our security guys at the London Clinic: Blake had absconded from rehab and turned up at the hospital, demanding to see Amy. ‘Turn yourself in to the police,’ I said to him, when security passed me the phone.

He said he would, but he pleaded to see Amy before he did that. Against my better judgement, I agreed he could spend some time with her. What a mistake that was. To my amazement, I got a call less than an hour later from Amy’s security to say that they thought Blake had given her drugs.

You couldn’t make it up if you tried. There he was one day, saying he wanted to save her, and the next he was giving her drugs. I had learned that addicts lapse, but this man had told me he liked being a drug addict. What I thought of him at that moment is unprintable.

I headed straight for the hospital, but by the time I arrived Blake had left. I asked Amy about the drugs he had given her and was very relieved when she produced them from under her pillow. ‘Dad, I’m not that stupid,’ she said, handing them over to me to flush away. I was thrilled she was keeping control of her recovery, but I couldn’t help wondering if she had taken some. I wanted to believe her denials but my cynicism was born of long experience.

When Amy learned that Blake had turned himself in at Shoreditch Police Station, she was pleased and,