Amy, My Daughter

I was happy to hear she was planning to get away again, and happier still that she could joke with me. ‘Oh, yeah?’ I teased. ‘I’ll just buy one plane ticket, shall I?’

She ended up going with her friends Tyler and Violetta Thalia. This worried me because I knew Tyler was drinking a lot. I couldn’t help wondering if this was part of a familiar pattern: when she’d been taking drugs, she’d surrounded herself with drug buddies and now… I didn’t know about Violetta.

She’d picked a good time to get away. On 12 April, the News of the World published the story, ‘Blake Gets Junkie Pregnant’. The article said that a woman called Gileen Morris had told them Blake had made her pregnant while they were both in the Phoenix Futures Rehab Centre in Sheffield. Blake, she told the paper, was ‘going to stand by her’. The paper went on, ‘Regarding the Back to Black star, she said: “If Amy wants to be a step-mum I wouldn’t mind, as long as she steers clear of drugs and self-harming.” These sordid revelations will damage Blake’s efforts to bank half of Amy’s ?10-million fortune on the grounds of the singer’s infidelity.’

My concern was that, when Amy saw the story, she would flip out.

A couple of days later Amy called me, drunk, from St Lucia. I guessed that she hadn’t seen the News of the World because she was debating what to get Blake for his birthday, which was two days away. She was drunk the next day too, and for several days after that. But when Andrew called me from St Lucia I knew something was really up. Amy had checked herself into hospital as she wasn’t feeling well after days of drinking heavily.

Strangely, this moment marked yet another turning-point for her. She didn’t curb her drinking (though I wish she had), but from then on, whenever she felt ill, she would check herself into the hospital. When she’d been a drug addict, it was almost impossible to get her to set foot in a hospital, but suddenly she was going on her own. The next day when she called me she sounded fine. The whole episode made me wonder if perhaps she’d checked into the hospital because she knew she couldn’t get a drink there. Maybe that was her way of stopping herself drinking. A few days later she was out of the hospital, but Tyler had been admitted with alcohol poisoning.

Raye went to St Lucia to sort things out. As much as I wanted to go myself I couldn’t. A few months previously, I’d been approached by an independent production company, Transparent Television, about a documentary they were producing on families facing problems with addiction, which was to be shown on Channel 4. They’d wanted to know if I would be interested in fronting it. I ended up meeting with Jazz Gowans and Richard Hughes, who explained that the documentary wasn’t specifically about Amy, and I would interview families about their experience in dealing with addicted relatives. This was right up my street as I wanted the public to know about the heartaches and dilemmas that such people live with. I’d agreed to do the documentary.

Raye called me and brought me up to speed with how Amy and Tyler were. Since they’d known each other, they’d been like two peas in a pod. I’d always thought that was a good thing but maybe now it wasn’t.

I flew out to St Lucia towards the end of April 2009, with Jazz and Richard, who were with me to film there. I bumped into Tyler, who was flying home. He was gaunt and pale, and it was clear the drinking had taken its toll. He was still a good-looking guy but I was worried by his appearance and told him so. When I arrived at the villa, Amy was pleased to see me, but tipsy. As the day wore on she got increasingly drunk. I didn’t see her drinking so assumed she had a secret supply.

Every time she drank she seemed to get herself into trouble. At the resort, she was rude to a British couple, who had asked her to pose with them for a photo on the beach. I didn’t want to be around her that evening because I was depressed. It was evident to me that she had swapped one addiction for another. Instead I spent the evening with Andrew, Anthony and Neville, the security boys, who were all on St Lucia with Amy, to discuss her drink problem. They told me that there was very little they could do to stop her drinking but assured me they were always watching her back and had pulled her out of several nasty situations.

The following week Amy was due to perform at the St Lucia Festival. When I returned to London, I saw Raye and told him I doubted that Amy would be up to appearing. Raye, who was going to St Lucia, said he would take a view when he got there and pull the gig if he had to.

As it turned out, Amy was sober for the open-air Festival gig, but there were other problems, which, for once, went beyond drugs and alcohol. For one thing, there was torrential rain so there were technical issues. Beyond that, though, Amy sang four songs, then said she’d had enough – she was bored singing the same old songs.

I was a bit surprised to hear that, but as I listened to her, I got the sense that there was slightly more to it. As I’ve said, Amy wasn’t the most confident of performers and if something went wrong, like her forgetting a lyric, her confidence would be blown for the rest of the show. According to Raye, that was exactly what happened. Amy forgot the words to one of her songs, stopped singing and the band started the song again, which threw her. Then the heavens opened and Raye was on the stage mopping up rainwater. He was worried about it – that’s how people get electrocuted onstage. He told Amy to come off and she did, as good as gold, no problem at all. In fact, after her stumble with the lyric, I think she was relieved.

She sounded fine when I spoke to her later that day. ‘I’ve haven’t had a drink for two days now, Dad. Aren’t you proud of me?’

I told her I was. Then she said she was happy that Blake was divorcing her. ‘I want to meet someone else, Dad. I want to fall in love again, I want to get married again, and I want to have babies, Dad – lots of ’em.’

‘That’s lovely, darling. What about your music?’

I liked her fantasy but at that moment that was exactly what it was. I knew she wasn’t over Blake, not yet anyway. For now, it was better to get her focused entirely on writing and singing. Everything else would surely follow.

‘Yeah, I want to do that as well,’ she replied. ‘I want to sing some new stuff.’

Raye had proposed a Brazilian tour, but after the Festival in St Lucia, he felt it couldn’t go ahead until Amy had some new songs to sing: the Back to Black songs, apart from ‘Rehab’, were still bringing her down. When I told Raye what Amy had said about the divorce, and suggested that at last she was over Blake, he was surprised. His impression was that nothing had changed on that score. As always seemed to be the case, her mental state changed from day to day – it all depended on which day you happened to be talking to her.

While we all had conflicting impressions of what Amy could handle, she continued to do well on St Lucia and the reports from her security team were encouraging. Although she was still drinking, it wasn’t every day, and when she did drink, she wasn’t getting drunk. The papers were still running pieces about it, but it was useless to tell them she wasn’t drinking as much as she had been.

Interestingly, she started spending a lot of time in the gym, and I think all that exercise was incredibly helpful. When we spoke, she’d reiterate that she never wanted to see Blake again and that, of course, was what I wanted to hear. Some friends of hers were due to join her for a short stay. While they were there, Amy told me she’d had a great time with them, had cut down on her drinking and felt a lot better for it. Meanwhile, the Subutex was doing its job: there were no signs of withdrawal.

One night she called me up and said, ‘Dad, I want you to know, I’ll never take drugs again.’

I’ll be honest: when I went up to bed that night, I had a little cry. At last, I thought. And the best part was this time she had been telling the truth.

17 BEACHED

I flew back to St Lucia on 26 June and Amy met me at the airport. As we arrived at the villa, she took my hand and led me to the beach. ‘Come with me, Dad,’ she said. ‘Somebody needs our help. I hope you’ve brought plenty of money with you.’

As there were various bills to pay on St Lucia, I’d brought eight thousand dollars in cash. Amy walked me down the beach until we came upon an elderly man called Julian Jean-Baptiste, who was sitting under the shade of a small tree. He looked to me like he was dying. ‘George needs our help, Dad,’ Amy said – she called him George, I don’t know why.