Amy, My Daughter by Mitch Winehouse Page A

get to know the family before they eventually tied the knot.
    â€˜I won’t stand in your way,’ I told her. ‘You’re both adults. It’s for you and Blake to decide.’
    The issue of his drug use occurred to me, but I pushed it aside. I was pretty sure by now that Amy’s stance on class-A drugs would have rubbed off on Blake: if he hadn’t stopped on his own, she would have made him. If I was wrong, I thought, there would be enough time before they got married for me to do something about it.
    I wondered then if she planned to marry sooner than we thought. I reminded her what had happened when Janis and I had got married, how upset Janis was that her mother didn’t come to our wedding – she had recently left Janis’s father and run off with another man. Janis still got upset about that and I didn’t want her to miss our daughter’s wedding. She deserved to be there. And me? Well, of course I wanted to be at my little girl’s wedding – but to Blake? I wasn’t sure.
    I told Amy that if they were thinking of getting married while they were in Miami I would fly Janis out so she could be part of it. Amy promised me that Janis and I would both be at the wedding. It seemed to me that Blake couldn’t have cared less if his mother was at his wedding or not, and I think he was partially to blame that neither Janis nor I was there when they were married in Miami on 18 May 2007.
    Just after the ceremony Amy called me, all excited. ‘Dad, we’ve just got married!’
    I was stunned into silence.
    â€˜Aren’t you going to congratulate us?’ she carried on, seemingly oblivious to how I felt.
    I couldn’t bring myself to say the words to her. In fact, I couldn’t say anything to her – I pretended I couldn’t hear her properly and hung up. I was beside myself with sadness for Janis, and really angry with Amy. After that she called me back several times, but I didn’t pick up.
    Eventually I phoned her. ‘Amy, you know what?’ I said. ‘Your mum should have been there. Never mind me. Your mum should have been there. ’
    â€˜Yeah,’ she said. ‘I know that, Dad, but we thought it was the right thing to do at the time …’
    â€˜What do you mean we thought it was the right thing to do? What’s it got to do with Blake about your mother being at your wedding?’ I didn’t object to Amy marrying him: she’d told me she loved him and that he loved her. But I took great exception to them preventing Janis from being at the wedding. What business was it of Blake’s? They’d been married five minutes and he’d already put my back up.
    The call ended badly, but I resigned myself to what had happened and made sure that it wouldn’t cause a rift between us, even though I was seething about the snub to Janis. I suggested throwing a wedding party later in the year, but although Amy was up for it, it never happened.

8
ATTACK AND THE ‘PAPS’
    Over the next few months I didn’t see much of Amy and Blake – which was not surprising: they were newly married, after all. Amy still found time for me, though, and we met often enough for me to think all was well.
    On the evening of Monday, 6 August 2007, at her flat in Jeffrey’s Place, Amy had her first seizure. She was alone with Blake. He put her on her side in the recovery position, but instead of calling an ambulance, he phoned Juliette. I doubt very much that he told her the severity of the situation. Had he done so, I’m sure Juliette would have told him to call an ambulance right away. Instead she drove from her home in Barnet to Camden Town, which must have taken at least half an hour, and then, in Juliette’s car, they took Amy to University College Hospital in central London, arriving at about one a.m.
    By the time they got to the hospital, Amy was unconscious and Juliette called me. I was working in my