Saving Amy (9 page)
It strikes me that Mitch is in denial about Amy – maybe this is because he loves her and he really wants to grab onto any glimmer of hope that Amy is okay – but, in my mind, he is in constant denial.
Amy is doing what she is doing and there are many reasons for her behaviour, but Mitch doesn’t push his daughter to find out what possesses her to act as she often does – or, indeed, to try to find out what demons drive her. Mitch’s refusal to accept the reality of the situation forms part of that addiction.
News of Amy’s relationship with Blake filtered back to England, and even though they had broken up, Alex didn’t take the news at all well. He made his feelings known to anyone who would listen, as seen, in particular, when he sold alleged intimate details of his sex life with Amy to the press, an action that helped to strengthen Amy’s ‘bad girl’, ‘rock chick’ image.
Amy seemed happy with Blake, however, and Blake joined her on a trip to Canada, where she was performing, about a month after the New York trip. It was then that Mitch first began to worry about Blake’s influence on his daughter.
He says, ‘… [We] went to Canada and he was already there with Amy. … We are talking about April 2007. Amy did maybe three or four shows … but they did not move out of the room. They were in the room the whole time. And when she went to do the shows … he was in the room, just all the time.’
‘Did
that
bother you?’ I ask.
Mitch concurs this time. ‘That
did
concern me. Because at the time, being naive, I am thinking, “What is he doing in the room for all the time? Sleeping? He can’t be sleeping all day.” He was in the room 23 hours.’
‘What did you do?’ I say to him.
‘Again we went about our business and I said to Amy, “Where’s Blake? I haven’t seen him. …”
‘… When did you actually think, “Oh my God! My daughter is dating a drug addict? A hard drug addict?”’ I say.
‘… He was in the room and he never emerged. I don’t know what he was doing in the room. I can only surmise what he was doing, but he never came out of the room. But Amy’s situation, she never seemed to me at that point to be out of control. I saw two of her performances, which were absolutely superb, so she was able to perform and put on a good show. … The problems started much later.’
‘So when you reflect back that was probably the time?’ I persist.
‘Yeah, I would say so. With the benefit of hindsight I look back – yeah maybe, that’s right.’
In April 2007, Amy and Blake became engaged. The British tabloid the
Sun
was one of several newspapers to break the story, commenting that ‘Caner Of the Year contender Amy’ had decided that Blake was ‘the one’ and had recently been seen flashing her Tiffany ring
around to friends. Amy publicly referred to Blake as her ‘boy’ and also her ‘best friend’ – much in the same way that she’d referred to Alex Claire when they were together just a few months earlier.
I ask Janis if she was surprised by her daughter’s engagement. Janis comments that when Amy introduced her to Blake, she ‘took one look and said –
“He
is not somebody that she [Amy] should be with.
He
has nothing to offer!” … I was polite and when I heard the story that he’d asked her to marry him, well, I thought … she won’t. She won’t, because … I had been at her home and she said, “Mum, I don’t think I am the marrying sort. I don’t think it’s for me … I’m not the sort to think of somebody else so I don’t think I could work marriage.”’
While on tour in the States though, Amy and Blake did get married in Miami; neither Mitch nor Janis were present.
‘Did they elope?’ I ask Janis.
‘They didn’t so much elope,’ she says. ‘… I think it’s just a weird story. They got married at … Miami-Dade County [Marriage License Bureau in Florida on 18 May] …And when I spoke to her I … heard that she had spoken to Mitch before that and he had said, “Don’t get married Amy. Promise me you won’t get married. Mum will be so upset.”’
‘Did she promise you?’ I ask Mitch, intrigued by his answer.
Mitch responds: ‘I knew she was going to get married [but] I didn’t say “Don’t get married.” I said, “Don’t get married without your Mother being there” because, Janis won’t mind me telling you, when Janis and
I got married her mother wasn’t there. And it was devastating. …’
I turn to Janis. ‘Were you devastated when your mother wasn’t [at your wedding to Mitch]?’
Janis grimaces, ‘No! I was quite happy actually …’
Mitch interjects, ‘… Because Janis didn’t get on with her Mum. I think I was more devastated for Janis … being so close to my Mum …’.
‘When did you know about the wedding?’ I ask Mitch.
‘… About half an hour after it happened,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t a shock as I knew they were going to get married but I specifically asked Amy … to make sure her Mum was there. … But they chose to get married quickly and I was very upset. I
told
Amy I was upset.’
I comment that it was very generous of Mitch to worry so much about how Janis would feel when he’s not married to her anymore. Most men wouldn’t, they would just move forward.
‘It is not a question of generosity …’ Mitch replies to me, ‘As I explained, Janis and I, we … remain very close. And I remember the anguish that Janis had when we got married and her Mum wasn’t there and I didn’t want her to go through that again. It was horrible for her. …
‘[Amy] phoned me about an hour and half after it happened. … she was very excited. Of course I wasn’t …. I knew that I really wanted her Mum to be there. And
I
wanted to be there. I wanted our family to be there …
But [Amy] didn’t want the same things; she felt it was sufficient for them to be on their own.’
I ask Mitch what he said to her after she announced that she and Blake were married.
‘I told her that her Mum was very upset and she said, “We will have a big party when we come home, Dad.”
‘We kind of got into that mind set that we would have a party when they got home [but] that is when the problems really started. From that date.’
Blake and Amy spent a few days in Florida after their marriage. Mitch caught up with them both again after they returned to London. He tells me that he thinks this is the point at which things quickly began to deteriorate for Amy and his own relationship with his daughter began to change.
Before Amy’s marriage to Blake Mitch was seeing his daughter three to four times a week but this now fell to about once a week. This was obviously difficult for Mitch to deal with.
Mitch said that he had to see Amy as there were certain things he had to discuss with her ‘… her business affairs. My signatures are on [her] account. I run the business on a day-to-day basis …. There are accountants and I have to discuss things with her [but] I couldn’t get to see her. She was asleep … She was wrapped up with her husband – which is fair enough.
‘I understand that when a young lady gets married she hasn’t got as much time for her Dad as she used to have.
It is understandable. I [didn’t] expect to see her three or four times a week.’
On 9 August 2007, several newspapers ran the story that Amy had been rushed to a London hospital, where she had had her stomach pumped after a massive drugs overdose, something that Amy subsequently denied, but Blake Fielder-Civil confirmed in 2009, after his divorce from Amy.
Amy had, according to newspapers at that time, allegedly taken ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine (horse tranquillizers) during a London pub crawl, and washed it all down, at various points in the evening, with vodka and Jack Daniels.
When she started foaming at the mouth and fitting, Blake and a female friend (who Blake later confirmed was Juliette Ashby) took her to A&E.
Janis comments: ‘If he’[d] have been in his normal state he wouldn’t [have] … He
actually
had the presence of mind to turn her over on her side to stop her swallowing her tongue and on that occasion he saved her life … You can argue that his actions had brought Amy to this position, but on the one occasion he actually saved her life.
‘Ironic isn’t it?’
Amy announced that her up-and-coming US tour would be delayed.
Mitch spoke to Blake’s parents, Giles and Georgette, as they tried to work out how to help their children.