Amy, My Daughter (18 page)

Amy was whisked away and I was left to sit and think about what had just happened. Jevan had checked on her at seven thirty and I'd arrived just after that, which meant that Jevan probably wouldn't have checked on her again for another fifty-five minutes. Thank God I'd arrived when I had. If I hadn't, I think Amy would have died.

I paced up and down. Nobody was telling me anything. I kept asking what was going on. They told me that the doctor would come and see me as soon as he could.

I was driving myself mad. There was a sign saying no mobile phones but I needed to talk to Jane, so I phoned her. She calmed me down a bit and asked me if I wanted her to call Janis. I said that I would call her when we had more information, but I phoned Raye and told him to manage the press. He called Chris Goodman at the Outside Organization straight away.

Still nothing was happening. I kicked up so much fuss that eventually security threatened to throw me out. After a while a nurse came and told me I could see Amy.

‘How is she?' I asked, desperate for anything.

The nurse mumbled something and scuttled off. In my fertile imagination I convinced myself that she felt uncomfortable telling me just how bad Amy was.

I didn't know what to expect and was shaking when I walked into the room. Amy was in bed, asleep, with an oxygen mask over her face. She was hooked up to about a hundred tubes and there was a machine monitoring her heart. The doctor was there; he told me he'd have a better idea of her condition when they got the blood-test results. I couldn't get anything else out of him. His bleeper went and he was gone and I was left alone with Amy.

So what had happened? Another seizure? Had she overdosed? I had no idea, but she was alive and I prayed that she was going to be okay.

I picked up her hand. What had happened to my little girl? She'd been doing so well and now this. I felt faint. I let go of her hand and poured myself a cup of water from the jug next to her bed. My hands were shaking so much that, by the time the cup reached my lips, most of the water had spilled down my shirt.

I sat down hard on a chair next to the bed and put my head in my hands, not knowing what more I could do to help Amy if she survived; and what I would do, God forbid, if she didn't.

My head was pounding and I stood on wobbly legs, took deep breaths and gave myself a good talking-to. I poured another cup of water and sat down. It was now ten forty-five and I was preparing for a long vigil.

I was dog-tired and, as hard as I tried to stay awake, I dozed off. A clap of thunder woke me just before midnight. The lightning lit up the whole room as rain pounded the windows, but Amy slept on. What with the thunder and lightning, and the shadows bouncing off the walls, I felt like I was in a Hammer Horror film.

Eventually the rain stopped and I pulled myself together. I needed to go to the lavatory but I didn't want to leave Amy, so I crossed my legs and slumped back in the chair.

At about half past midnight Amy woke up. She lifted her head from the pillow, looked around her, pulled off the oxygen mask and simply said, ‘I'm starving, Dad. Fancy a KFC?' She looked at me a bit strangely and said, ‘Dad? Why are you crying?'

I was in floods of tears.

When I'd gathered myself back together I told her what had happened. She had no recollection of any of it. I asked her if she had taken any drugs, but she didn't want to talk about it and I couldn't press the issue. Then she thought for a moment, and said she remembered asking someone for headache pills; she couldn't remember if she'd taken them or not.

Apparently there had been people in and out of the house all day. ‘Perhaps somebody slipped me something, Dad,' she suggested. Either on purpose or by mistake, I thought. The last thing she remembered was listening to music in her room.

I thought about asking the doctor if Amy could have something to eat but as the answer would probably be no I decided not to bother.

There was a twenty-four-hour KFC just up the road from University College Hospital and that was where I went. There were loads of paps outside the hospital, and on my way back in one asked how serious Amy's condition was. I held up a bag of KFC and said, ‘That's how serious it is.'

We both loved KFC, so I'd bought buckets of it, and by one fifteen Amy and I were tucking in. She seemed fine and was remembering more of what had happened. Someone had given her some temazepam, a sedative used to relieve anxiety. We found out later that Amy had had an adverse reaction to it, which had caused a fit. After we'd eaten, Amy said she felt fine and wanted to go home. I told her I'd ask, and I did, although I knew what the answer would be: the hospital wanted to keep her in for observation.

15
CLASS-A MUG STILL TAKING DRUGS

The next day the news was out that Amy had been taken to hospital, and I got a lot of calls and messages from well-wishers. Amy was in good spirits and Andrew took her home around lunchtime, where Jevan looked after her until I arrived to take her for a five o'clock appointment with Dr Tovey. She kept messing around and wouldn't get ready, and I was getting annoyed. I didn't want to shout at her after what she had been through the night before, but I was already having problems with Amy's doctors, so I didn't want her to miss the appointment. The doctors kept contradicting each other. One would say that Amy must be treated in a clinic, and another would say it was best for her to be treated at home. I didn't know who to believe. To add to the problems, Amy didn't like most of her doctors so I was contemplating starting again with a new set. I had faith in them, but it was imperative Amy did too. As Dr Tovey was prescribing the Subutex, I decided that, for now, I would go with his advice. In the end he agreed to come to the house, where he examined Amy and prescribed her more Subutex.

A couple of days later Amy was meant to see Dr Tovey again, but she couldn't bring herself to leave the house. She knew she only had three more days' supply of Subutex so at some point she would have to go and see him. Of course, I could have asked him to come to the house again, but I didn't want to make it too easy for Amy. I thought it was important for her to be proactive in her recovery. I'd observed that she felt vulnerable on the street, where paps and temptations lurked, but I didn't think she should hide away at home.

During the first week of August Janis had a minor car accident and was hospitalized at Barnet General Hospital, north London. Thankfully, it wasn't too serious, but Amy, Alex and I all went to visit her – I was encouraged that Amy was able to leave the house for this. It seemed that almost every day something bad was happening to my family, and it was taking its toll on my health. I was anxious, I was short with people, and poor Jane bore the brunt of everything. I needed a break but I was scared to go away, fearing that something terrible would happen if I wasn't there. That feeling stayed with me for the next three years and in the end, sure enough, I was right.

Later that week Amy missed her appointment to visit Blake in prison because she couldn't get up. She was very agitated and angry with herself, until Jevan administered the last of the Subutex. Then she calmed down quickly and we ended up having a nice afternoon together, looking online at potential properties for her to rent in the country. Leaving the house was a real problem. She had wanted to play at the upcoming V Festival gigs in Leeds, and at Chelmsford the following week, and I knew she needed to prepare herself, but she couldn't even face the idea of a walk. I made a mental note to put Raye on standby to cancel her appearances, and started to wonder if Amy's staying in was a sign of something deeper.

A couple of days later Amy was due to visit Blake again – he'd been moved now to Edmunds Hill Prison in Suffolk, about sixty-five miles and an hour and a half's drive from London – but she had been up the previous night until two and again couldn't get up in the morning. She and Andrew were late leaving, and about halfway there they realized they weren't going to arrive in time, so they turned around and drove home.

Jevan called later that day: a drug-dealer was hanging about outside the house. I called the security guy and told him not to let the man in. By the time I arrived the drug-dealer was nowhere to be seen and Jevan had gone home for the day. Amy was alone, deserted by her ‘friends' now that she wasn't doing drugs. She was lonely and wanted to go out, but couldn't persuade herself to leave the house. It was heartbreaking to see her like that. She'd always been such a strong character, always at the centre of every gathering, and now she was quiet and on her own. I felt so sorry for her. I managed to cheer her up a bit with some of my boyhood stories and ‘Mitchellisms' though, and it wasn't long before I had her laughing.

I told her that after my father passed away, a friend of his, Sammy Soroff, had come to see me. ‘He said to me, “I've come for the money your father Alec owes me.” Now, I didn't know what he was on about, and I was only young so I didn't know what to do. Sammy said, “Your dad and I went up north to do a bit of business, and I paid the whole bill. Your dad never paid me back. I want my money.” Now I was really worried – how could I afford to pay him back? I said I'd find a way one day to pay the debt. And to this day I still owe it to him.'

Amy was entranced, and I knew I had her when she asked, ‘How much do you owe Uncle Sammy, Dad? I'll give it to you.'

‘Oh, about forty pounds,' I replied, laughing, and she got it, and laughed too.

I believed that getting Amy out of Camden Town might help her get her confidence back; I also knew her whole family would be happier if she was away from that environment, so a few days later I started house-hunting. I looked at some very decent places, all just outside London, in Rickmansworth, Hemel Hempstead and Hadley Wood. I thought any of them would be great, but Amy was more concerned about how she would get her next dose of Subutex.

I talked to Raye about the possibility of Amy not being able to sing at the V Festival, but we decided to leave it until the last minute to make a decision. Raye had also had an offer for Amy to do a big concert in Rio on New Year's Eve.

‘Right now, she won't leave Camden,' I said. ‘How the hell are we going to get her to Rio?'

In the end Raye managed to persuade her onto the tour bus for the V Festival. She came onstage about half an hour late, but performed pretty well. The next day she was late onstage again, but Raye said she was very well received by the huge audience. He thought she was stupendous that night and had nailed it. When I watched it on TV, I'd have called her performance average.

Once Amy was back in Prowse Place the same problems returned. She was still anxious about going out and Dr Tovey had to visit her at home to prescribe more Subutex. One day she was planning to go to the gym for some much-needed exercise, but she got to the front door and couldn't leave the house. Her mental state was getting worse day by day. Most of her doctors had washed their hands of her as she wouldn't listen to them. I was rapidly losing confidence in her current treatment regime, and needed to come up with new ideas and methods. I rang round my pals and got the jungle drums beating.

Amy was also having rows with lots of her friends. I heard from Jevan that Geoff had been around again, although he hadn't given her any drugs, and Lauren was giving her a hard time about how she was handling her recovery. Some of Amy's clean friends weren't supporting her. She was always on her own and they'd given her no credit for embarking on the drug-replacement programme that appeared to be helping her recover. In the end, they had their view of how she should handle it, and I had mine. We agreed to differ.

To add to our troubles, I discovered that, over the last couple of months, Amy had used her debit card to draw seven thousand pounds from her account. I felt sure that this was a payment for drugs – what else could it be? I was trying to convince myself that it was for an old drug debt, but later that day Andrew called to say a new drug-dealer had managed to get into the house. Apparently Amy had called him, and welcomed him at the front door as an old friend. ‘I fear that Amy is back on drugs.' I wrote in my diary that night. ‘Here we go again.'

We could find a way to stop Amy withdrawing cash, but if she was still determined to get hold of drugs she'd find a way. In the end I confronted her about it and told her I knew that huge sum had been spent on drugs. She went mad, and we had a bit of a row, but eventually she admitted she had paid other people's drugs bills, and assured me it would never happen again.

We still had the problem of Amy's remaining gigs. She had three more booked and she was supposed to be focusing on her new album. The first was in France. Raye had managed to get Amy out of the house, and they were on the Eurostar together, when Blake phoned her from prison and told her not to do the gig. It seemed Amy would do anything that Blake said. He told her she was being bullied into it and she shouldn't go. As the train was about to pull out of the station, Amy got off, jumped over the barrier and into a cab to Prowse Place. The no-show ended up costing 150,000 euros.

After that, Raye cancelled her performance at the GQ Awards. Amy wasn't in a good state, but she was livid, protesting that she was well enough to go. She wasn't. And she was blaming everyone but herself for her inability to perform. She told me that she was totally bored with her life and wanted to move away from Camden Town. But when I said I had properties for her to view, she said she wasn't up to it. I went outside and kicked the wall. My plan had been to find a place where she had enough space and privacy to write and record at home, so that when she didn't go out at least she could be working. I wanted her to get over her boredom by finding new inspiration, away from Camden. That she chose not even to consider the options was infinitely frustrating.

I was also worrying about Blake being able to stake a claim on Amy's money. He had told me again that he definitely wanted a divorce and was going to send me a visiting order so we could discuss it. If Blake went through the courts he might be awarded a cash sum from Amy on their divorce. I wanted to avoid this, but Amy's accountant, Margaret Cody, said it would be very difficult to obtain a protection order to stop Blake getting his hands on Amy's money. And if we did that we might alienate Amy. We had to find an alternative.

The next day when I saw Amy she looked and sounded a lot better. One day she was at death's door and the next she was fine. She was sticking to the Subutex regime, but I suspected she was also taking other stuff.

The last of Amy's scheduled gigs was on the Isle of Wight. Amy was responsible for the costs of production, staff, her band, travelling and other expenses, which amounted to some £96,000. She was being paid £150,000 for the gig. But if there was another no-show, the £96,000 would still have to be paid. I was concerned that Blake would phone her at the last minute and tell her not to go. Thankfully, she made it onstage, albeit half an hour late, and the show went very well.

That was the last of her live shows for the foreseeable future and I was glad, but I couldn't read how Amy felt about it and had no idea how she'd fill the gap. At least they had kept her active, when she was becoming so depressed and lonely. Now she was meant to be spending all her time on the new album, but I felt we might be entering a dangerous period. It seemed that Amy's drug habit was diminishing, and I felt incredibly positive about that – she always took her Subutex – but I found it hard to understand why she was still doing drugs if the Subutex was working. I asked Amy about it repeatedly, but she had no answer for me. I found out later, from talking to other recovering addicts, that this is often the way.

 

*   *   *

 

With things looking up with Amy, Jane and I took a much-needed break in Tenerife. When we got back there were new problems: Blake was rearing his head once again.

He was being released with a tag. I was devastated, but Amy was very pleased, saying she'd put him on Subutex and was going to help him get clean. I knew that if he and Amy ever got back together, Subutex would become the poor relation and they would be back on drugs in no time at all. Meanwhile, Amy still didn't know that Blake intended to divorce her; if she did, she kept very quiet about it. I wanted Blake out of the picture, but if he went ahead with the divorce before Amy was clean, there was every chance that she would flip out and we'd be back where we'd started – or worse. It was a lose-lose situation, really.

Blake wasn't released when he was supposed to be because the police were concerned about the drugs goings-on in Prowse Place, his named address. He was told he could be released to Georgette's address, but he said he'd rather stay in prison. When she heard that, Amy was beside herself and told me she wanted to find a new house immediately. Then she had a really bright idea: she wanted Blake to be released to my house. I was totally gobsmacked. She couldn't understand why I said no.

A few days later we had a bit of good news. Raye spoke to Blake's solicitor and discovered Blake wouldn't be released until the end of his sentence on 6 September 2009, a whole year away. That
must
be enough time for Amy to get clean, I thought. I had to contend with her disappointment, but I could handle that if it meant we had twelve more months without Blake. Her disappointment was short-lived. By the beginning of October she seemed okay and hardly spoke about Blake at all. She was still very thin, but she looked a lot healthier, and Jevan confirmed that visits from drug-dealers were non-existent.

I had arranged to talk to Russell Brand about Amy and met him at his house in Hampstead, north London. He is a recovering addict and gave me some very helpful advice about her situation. He was impressed that she was sticking to the Subutex, and introduced me to his drug counsellor, Chip Somers. I set up an appointment to meet him right away. My conversation with Russell left me feeling optimistic that the end of the road could be in sight. A lot would depend on whether or not Amy got back with Blake, but time was on our side now, and she seemed to be coping well.

I met Chip Somers at Focus 12, the drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, and was very impressed with the work he was doing. If only we could get Amy there, I thought, this would be a good place for her to be now that she appeared to be nearing the home straight.

But the daily frustrations continued, with Amy missing appointments and Blake persuading her not to do things. Eventually I'd had enough, and I tore into her. She screamed and shouted and we both got very worked up. I can't remember what we said in the heat of the moment, but in the end Amy promised, ‘I'll keep my next appointment, Dad, but it's really hard without Blake. Can you stop going on about him all the time?'