Salaam did a bit of stuff with that too.’
A day or so later Amy insisted I went on a spending spree with her in Selfridges.
She hadn’t had a drink for three days, and revealed that she wanted to go on an intensive driving course – God help us, I thought. When we’d finished shopping, I did something a bit cheeky. I knew she wouldn’t wear half the things she’d bought – we’d been down this road before – so, without her knowing, I took a lot back. Previously Amy would never have noticed the missing clothes, but she phoned me straight away.
‘Dad, did I leave a Selfridges bag in your cab yesterday?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got stuff missing.’ I pleaded ignorance but I think she knew what I’d done because she made me take her back to Selfridges to buy exactly the same things again. I was pleased she’d noticed that the clothes were missing.
At the end of March Amy started recording a track for the Quincy Jones seventy-fifth birthday celebration album
Music had started to play a bigger role in Amy’s life again, but she was not without her setbacks. A few days before this, she had started drinking seriously again. Raye and I tried to talk to her about it, but she wouldn’t listen and only wanted to talk about Blake and the fact that he was on methadone. But when I turned up at Love 4 Music I was taken by surprise: Amy was ready to talk about her problems. She told me she was going to get her act together and wanted to book into the London Clinic to get the alcohol out of her system; just as importantly, she told me she was through with Blake. She thought it would be easier to break up with him face to face so she was going up to Sheffield the next day with Neville, one of the security boys.
Neville drove Amy up to Sheffield, but instead of coming back the same day, she stayed in Sheffield overnight. I worried and thought I’d have to go up there to collect her myself. In the end Amy returned the following day and told me it was over with Blake. But my initial delight disappeared when I heard how badly he had taken it: he was really upset and had resorted to drugs while Amy was with him, although she had tried to persuade him not to. The one positive was that I was sure Amy hadn’t taken anything.
Straight away I arranged for her to be admitted to the London Clinic to deal with her alcoholism. Everything seemed to be going so well – but a week later she left the clinic, went to a local pub and got drunk. This was the problem: until she admitted she was an alcoholic she would carry on fooling herself that she could deal with it alone. She’d been drinking for so long now it was second nature to her. She returned to the clinic at three o’clock in the morning, singing and shouting. Once again, she was using it as a hotel. It was a different problem, but we were falling back into the same cycle.
Of course it wasn’t over. A few days later Blake turned up in London, Amy dropped all her other plans and got drunk again. I wanted so much to stop her, but I knew from the expert advice I’d received that the only person who could stop Amy drinking was Amy. So I never ordered her to stop, just told her what the outcome might be if she didn’t, and was as supportive as I could be in helping her to give up, picking up the pieces each time she lapsed.
‘This is only going to end up one way, and it won’t be good,’ I told Amy. She was meant to have returned to the London Clinic, but she said she didn’t want to be there any more.
The next day Amy fell over in her flat because she was drunk, badly bruising her eye and cheek. When I went to see her at about seven o’clock, she was going on about how she must be with Blake but couldn’t because he wouldn’t give up drugs, and that she wanted to persuade him to get help with his addiction. I told her she was wasting her time and should think about getting help for her alcoholism, rather than worrying about Blake. But I felt my words were futile: whatever I said to her she’d ignore it if it wasn’t what she wanted to do at the time. I just had to find, somehow, the strength to face it day after day.
After a few days, I managed to convince Amy to go back into the London Clinic. The plan was that she’d spend four or five days sobering up before going to the Caribbean for a holiday, but after a couple of days she decided she didn’t want to go away: she wanted to concentrate on getting Blake clean. She felt safe at the Clinic, she told me. It was like a haven to her, the only place where she could be helped. She wanted to stay.
The following day I was doing a gig at the Hay Hill Gallery in Mayfair and Dr Glynne had agreed that Amy could leave the hospital to attend. It was a great evening, and Amy and I did an impromptu duet – it felt really special, me and my daughter onstage together, doing what we both loved, and the audience loved it. At the end of our last song, I looked across at Amy and saw tears on her cheeks. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Oh, Dad, I love it when you sing,’ she said, laughing at herself. ‘It makes me so happy I cry.’
Amy returned to the London Clinic, but a few nights later she went to a party with her friend Violetta and got drunk. For reasons that are unclear, Amy and Violetta stayed at the Jeffrey’s Place flat that night, and the following day the security guys called me to say that Blake was there. By the time I arrived, he had gone, probably scared of what I might say to him. But Amy was drunk and tearful over Blake arriving out of the blue. She’d had no idea that he was in London but somehow or other he had managed to track her down.
I was dismayed that Blake had been there, but it seemed his actions stemmed from desperation. Perhaps if Amy could keep him at a distance for long enough, he’d finally move on.
Amy had returned to the London Clinic, and when I went to visit her there I heard some really encouraging news. She told me that one afternoon a few weeks previously she had met a guy who was gorgeous and she’d really liked him. They had arranged to go out on a date the following week. Not wanting to make a big deal of it, I didn’t ask too many questions, but she told me his name was Reg.
It was only later that Amy told me the full story of how she had met film director Reg Traviss. His parents ran a pub on Devonshire Street, near Bryanston Square, and Reg had been sitting outside it one afternoon, having a cigarette, when Amy and Andrew passed him. Amy cast Reg a look and walked on; Reg knew who she was but didn’t return her look as, he told me later, he didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. Amy glanced over her shoulder for a second look at Reg, then went on up Devonshire Street.
About fifteen minutes later Reg was in the pub with some friends when Amy and Andrew walked in. Reg didn’t know it at the time, but Amy had been visiting the pub quite regularly over the past few months and had also been working out at the same gym as Reg’s mother and brother. She went over to talk to Reg’s brother. Reg walked casually up to the bar and Amy, bold as brass, came up to him and said, ‘I like your shoes.’ They were retro tan loafers, which Amy would have been into, but I think now that he could have been wearing football boots and she’d have gone over to start a conversation.
Over the following weeks, Amy went to the pub several times and chatted with Reg. It was a convenient place for them to meet, as they both lived within walking distance, and it’s not one of those pubs with loud music where everyone’s getting drunk. It’s a nice, quiet, traditional pub where you’re as likely to see customers drinking coffee and eating a sandwich as you are to see them with a pint of beer.
One day Reg wasn’t there so Amy left her number with a note for him to call her, which he did. Reg couldn’t be more different from Blake. He’s a film director but, with his immaculate greased-back hair and stylish retro clothes, he looks like a 1950s American movie star. Amy thought he had the look of my father Alec and his brothers; perhaps that was the initial attraction.
The night before her first date with Reg I saw Amy – she looked great and was very excited to be going out with him. Initially I was careful not to read too much into it. Of course I was desperate for her to move on from Blake, but I didn’t want to blow anything out of proportion. Blake hadn’t stopped calling her all the time, but she had told him that they should see other people as their relationship was over. Not only was Amy going on a first date with a new guy, she was seeing Blake off.
Amy’s first date with Reg had gone well and they planned to see each other again, but when Amy had got home that night Blake called her and they had a row. I couldn’t have wished for a better reaction from Amy. Blake had told her he was taking heroin intravenously, but instead of getting drawn into it, she had told him that, though she felt very sorry for him, she wouldn’t consider reconciliation. I felt relieved and proud that she was staying so strong.
I can’t say that Reg was the sole reason why Amy was able to dismiss Blake, but I think he had a lot to do with it. When I first met Reg a few weeks after he and Amy had started going out, I could see why she liked him. He was everything Blake wasn’t, and his warm, quiet and polite manner was appealing. He also seemed to have a fair grasp on how to deal with things relating to Blake. Reg understood that Amy would need to talk about him and
