When I heard that they were supposedly back together, I could take no more. I drove straight over to Hadley Wood where Amy and I had a terrible row about it. It was one of the worst arguments we had ever had. I said horrible things, and regretted them the minute they were out of my mouth. I can hardly bear to write down the words I hurled at her.
‘It’s your choice,’ I yelled. ‘If you go with him, you risk losing your family.’
Of course, the truth was we’d have stuck by her whatever she decided, but at that point I saw this as a disastrous setback. In Amy’s eyes, Blake could do no wrong, despite the numerous stories he was selling to the press around that time. She was determined to get back with him and there was very little any of us could do about it. Amy and I could never stay mad at each other for long, though, and we’d soon put the argument behind us. Sadly, we couldn’t move beyond Blake so easily.
18
‘I’LL CRY IF I WANT TO’
At the start of 2010 I was completely preoccupied by Amy’s relationship with Blake – the trouble he brought, the drama he caused and the undeniable possibility that he would be in Amy’s life for ever. The drama with Blake and Amy was continuing and all-consuming. I was so caught up in the day-to-day events, I couldn’t see further than the end of my nose. ‘I live in hope it will one day be over,’ I wrote in my diary, for the umpteenth time, on 1 January. I realize now I didn’t even have an inkling then as to what was around the corner. I hadn’t even begun to contemplate what the outcome would be for us all when Amy finally managed to quit her addiction to Blake.
The new year began with good news, though: Amy called me on New Year’s Day to wish me a happy new year and told me she hadn’t had a single drink on New Year’s Eve, even though she was celebrating with friends. The Librium she had just been prescribed was making her tired, but she seemed resolved to stay sober. ‘Keep at it,’ I told her. Surely it was worth feeling tired if it meant she didn’t drink.
‘Dad, I’m fed up at Hadley Wood,’ she said. ‘I don’t wanna be here any more. It’s boring. I want to be back in Camden – that’s where I’m happy.’
‘I understand, Amy, I’m working on it,’ I told her. ‘What about if I get you a suite at a hotel in the West End for now? The Langham do you?’
She’d always liked traditional West End hotels and the prospect cheered her up immediately. She didn’t ask why I hadn’t made any progress on finding her a new home, which I was glad about. I’d been deliberately taking my time because I wanted to keep her away from Camden for a bit longer, just until she was strong enough to resist temptation. I’d also been busy at AA meetings, talking to people about their experience of recovering from alcohol addiction, and I’d seen the rest of the family regularly to discuss how we could continue best to help Amy.
The situation with Blake seemed ominously reminiscent of how the previous year had ended – regular run- ins between them that would result in Amy claiming she wanted to work things out with him and could clean him up. There were headlines in the tabloids that she and Blake were going to remarry, that they were back on drugs. She kept going to Sheffield to see him, even though she always returned in a bad mood.
I had no idea where these reunions were heading, but she was seeing him a lot. With this in mind, I devised a new Blake strategy: I would arrange to meet him to see if we could resolve our differences.
I didn’t want to, believe me, but, much more to the point, I didn’t want to lose Amy. My pals were worried that I was exhausting myself dealing with her and her cycle of addictions – Blake, drugs, alcohol – but I reassured them that the only time I felt weary was when Amy and I were apart. When I was around Amy, I had the energy and drive to face all of her demons with her. Amy was pleased when I told her that I wanted to see Blake and said she would talk to him and arrange it. It never happened.
Shortly after this Amy had a big row with Blake on the phone; she said it was because he had had another girl with him when they spoke. She was depressed and clearly hungover, and later that day she decided she was going to Sheffield to see him. That troubled me: would Amy stay strong, or would she succumb to whatever it was in him that drew her?
I was woken at four the following morning by the phone.
‘Is that Mitch?’ the voice asked. ‘You don’t know me, but my name’s Danny. I’m ringing cos someone’s got to tell you. Amy’s overdosed.’
I was half asleep and at first the words barely registered. Then the worst rushed into my head: had Blake given her more drugs, had she drunk too much, or had she had another seizure? I uttered the words no father ever wants to say: ‘Is she dead?’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘She’s in the Royal Oak Hospital in Paddington.’
None of this made any sense: Andrew had called me earlier to confirm he and Amy were on their way to Sheffield. How could she be in a hospital in London? There isn’t a Royal Oak Hospital in Paddington. As I started to wake up I realized that this call from Danny was probably a nasty prank: he obviously didn’t know Amy was in Sheffield.
I was disgusted and shocked, but before I could try to gather my thoughts I called Amy’s phone. There was no answer so I called Andrew, woke him up and told him to get Amy to call me straight away. Within a few minutes she was on the line, assuring me she was all right, nothing had happened and the call was bogus.
After that, I couldn’t go back to bed so I went and sat downstairs and stared out of the window. I couldn’t understand what would lead someone to make a call like that. What kind of person would do such a thing? The constant abuse in the press was bad enough, and I’d had my fill of anonymous texts and shit like that. Now this. As I sat there, I felt worse and worse till suddenly – and unusually for me – I lurched to my feet and had to rush to the bathroom, where I threw up.
A few hours later Amy called to tell me again that she was okay, and to check that I was too.
One night when she was drunk she told me, out of the blue, that Blake was back on heroin big-time: she had watched him do it when she was up in Sheffield. She must have sensed my anxiety because, unprompted, she added, ‘Dad, you know I’ll never take class-A drugs again.’ I did know that. My biggest concern right now was that she stopped drinking.
In February Amy went to Jamaica to spend some time working with Salaam Remi in the recording studio. It was still early days for her in her writing for a third album; she was a fierce self-critic so it would take her a lot longer to come up with the songs for this album than it had for the first two. She tried out and discarded idea after idea. It gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be long before Amy was away from Blake for good. At times like this, when she was working, he seemed to be the furthest thing from her mind.
While Amy was away I found a new house for her in Camden Square. She was keen to get back into Camden Town – this felt like Amy’s true home in London and I’d found the perfect place: a lovely early- nineteenth-century house in its own grounds. It needed substantial work, as it was currently divided into six flats, so we were going to have to gut it. It had amazing potential for all of the things Amy wanted: a gym, a recording studio, lots of bedrooms and a lovely garden. Without even seeing it she told me to buy it.
When she came back from Jamaica, I took her there for the first time. She absolutely loved it and began making plans for its interior renovation. The bad news was that the work would take a long time and the lease on the Hadley Wood house was about to expire: she needed somewhere else to live, and quick. She still owned the flat in Jeffrey’s Place, but she didn’t want to go there, as it brought back bad memories. So, at the beginning of March, knowing that Amy wanted to be close to the centre of London, I found her a very nice flat to rent in Bryanston Square in the West End.
Along with her sessions with Salaam Remi, she had also started working with Mark Ronson again in London. In mid-March, Jane and I took her to lunch at Reubens restaurant, where we all ate ourselves silly. I was so pleased she was back working on what she did best, and it was fabulous for us to be talking about that instead of dancing around her problems. Amy said that the song ideas for the new album were progressing further than they had in Jamaica, although there were no completed tracks. In typical Amy fashion, she wouldn’t talk to me much about her music because the work wasn’t complete.
‘You’re going to have to wait, Dad,’ she said. ‘But I can tell you I’ve been working on the sixties-girl-group sound with Mark. I still like that. And a few other things. And in Jamaica I got into reggae again, so me and
