which pleased me. We talked briefly about her divorce, which was due to become absolute on 28 August, but when I saw she was getting upset I changed the subject. She was distracted, though, and I could see she wasn’t really listening to me.
‘Dad,’ she interrupted. ‘Blake rang today and wanted me to meet him in a hotel room. I didn’t go,’ she added hurriedly, as she saw my expression darken, ‘because I didn’t like something about the phone call. It didn’t sound right to me, a set-up or something, and I told him I weren’t going.’
I had to ask her: ‘What made you smell a rat?’
‘I don’t know, Dad,’ she said. I reckoned she did, but she wasn’t going to tell me. While I was pleased that she had not only declined to meet Blake but told me about it, I was certain she still harboured strong feelings for him.
I was right.
When Blake had been released from prison, it had been under a licence that was conditional on him not leaving Sheffield. But he had been coming to London often to see his new girlfriend. Amy was unaware of this, until eventually Blake told her what he’d been doing. I suspect this was only because the newspapers had got hold of the story and he wanted to tell her before she read about it.
Around this time my friend Dr Phil Rich, a clinical psychologist and behavioural therapist who also deals with alcohol-dependent patients, was over from America on holiday. On 8 September I was with him when I got a call from Andrew. He told me that Blake was at the house in Hadley Wood. Phil and I jumped into my taxi and drove straight over.
We arrived at around ten thirty a.m. Amy was in the kitchen wearing just a T-shirt and a pair of knickers. The security guys were used to her walking around like this and took no notice of it, but Amy was shocked to see me and started shouting, ‘Oh, no, oh, no…’
‘Where is he? Where’s Blake?’ I asked.
‘No, Dad, no, Dad,’ she kept shouting.
‘He’s upstairs in bed,’ Andrew told me.
As I was climbing the stairs, Amy grabbed one of my legs and I ended up dragging her with me as she kept shouting, ‘No, Dad, no, Dad… Don’t hit him, Dad.’
I managed to get upstairs, with Amy in tow, and sure enough, there he was, lying in Amy’s bed. I got hold of him and said, ‘Get out of bed and fuck off!’
Behind me, I heard Amy still shouting, ‘No, Dad, no, Dad, no, Dad.’
Blake got up. ‘Amy doesn’t want me to go.’
‘I don’t care what Amy wants.
Amy was still shouting, and I told her it had nothing to do with her. I actually wanted Blake to hit me so that I could legitimately lay into him. I tried to provoke him: ‘You and your family are scum,’ I said, thinking that surely he’d hit me if I said that.
But he didn’t. I have to hand it to him: he was as cool as a cucumber. I don’t know if drugs had made him that way, but in any event, he fronted me out.
Instead he said, ‘Can I have a shower?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Just get out now, because if you don’t there’s going to be trouble.’
I stood there while he got dressed, with Amy still shouting at me. He went downstairs, followed by Amy and me, and as he opened the front door, where there was a step leading down to the porch, he turned. ‘How am I going to get to the station?’
‘Fucking
‘But it’s a mile away.’
‘Too bad!’
Then he had the cheek to turn to Andrew and ask him, ‘Can you give me a lift to the station, mate?’
With that, I gave him a lift all right: I kicked him right up the backside, as hard as I could, and he fell over the step. Amy wanted to go to him but I stopped her and slammed the door.
It was a hell of scene, but it didn’t take Amy long to calm down. After about ten minutes it was like nothing had happened. Amy relaxed and we had a good talk. Finally when we’d got the events out of our system, she said, ‘Dad, let’s go to the East End.’
I was still burning over what had happened and now she wanted to go to the East End! ‘Amy, you’re really putting me through the mincer today,’ I said. ‘I can’t handle it.’
She came over and gave me a big hug. How could I refuse her after that?
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll go and see where Nan and Pop Alec grew up and all that.’
She went upstairs to get dressed, and after a while I followed to see if she was all right. I heard her on the phone to one of her friends saying, ‘Yeah, my dad threw Blake out and kicked him up the arse… My dad done his nut, it was fantastic.’
She was boasting about what I had done and seemed pleased that I’d done it. I crept downstairs, and when Amy finally appeared, she, Phil and I headed off to the East End.
About halfway there Amy started sweating, panting and shaking. Phil knew straight away what it was: ‘She’s going into alcohol withdrawal. You need to get her a drink, which will stave off the craving.’
‘Are you kidding?’ I asked.
‘She needs a small amount of alcohol and that will do the trick.’
Amy was in a bad way, and I was in no position to argue, so I stopped the cab and bought her a miniature bottle of vodka. She drank it and, sure enough, it worked.
We went to Albert Gardens, had a walk round the park in the middle of the square, then went to the Ocean Estate, just around the corner, which was where Phil’s grandparents had lived. We went back to Albert Gardens, and by now the news had spread that Amy was there and quite a lot of people were around. Amy signed autographs and posed for pictures. I leaned back on the cab and watched her, happy with her fans. ‘I love people seeing Amy like this,’ I said to Phil. ‘They normally only get to see her in the papers and she’s not like that. This is great.’
Amy looked at me then and smiled; she was pointing out to the people around her where our family, her grandparents, had lived in Albert Gardens. ‘They were at number thirty-one, my uncle Percy at number thirteen…’ Then she blew me an extravagant kiss. She was on top form and there were no signs of withdrawal. What had started out as a traumatic day was turning out well after all. It was becoming a day to remember for the right reasons.
As Amy’s twenty-sixth birthday approached, the situation with alcohol seemed to be turning. She’d had more sober than drunk days over recent weeks, enough that we started to have a lot more confidence in what she was capable of. Especially after she told Raye she wanted to be able to return to the US, to work with her producers, and then ‘Who knows? Maybe do a few gigs over there.’ Raye took her to an appointment at the US Embassy, which included a blood test, more in hope than expectation. The appointment went well and he said we’d get a decision within a fortnight. Generally Amy was keeping relatively quiet, playing guitar in her room and for the most part staying away from drink.
On 9 September 2009 John Reid told me that their offices had received a letter from Blake’s solicitors with some incredible news. At the end of August, we’d served Georgette with our notice of court proceedings regarding her alleged copyright infringement of Amy’s letters. Blake was now offering to drop all claims against Amy – but only if we agreed to drop our case for copyright infringement against Georgette. When I spoke to Amy about the settlement, she was all for it.
The deal with Blake was finalised towards the end of September. He agreed not to make any claim on Amy and we agreed not to pursue our case against Georgette. Pity for him he didn’t know that, prior to his offer, we’d been going to offer him ?250,000 in a full and final divorce settlement. In the end, he got nothing. My diary sums him up: ‘He’s a mug.’ On 5 October, I told Amy that our solicitors had confirmed her divorce from Blake was now final. She told me two-thirds of her was happy about it, the other third wasn’t. I never managed to get her to explain exactly what she meant, but I assumed it was because he’d recently rented a flat in Sheffield with the money he’d made selling stories to the press.
Though we all hoped Blake was now behind us, I had no illusions that things were going to be totally better. Around her birthday, Amy had a stretch of drinking days. Finally she checked herself into the London Clinic to dry
