exactly what led to this meeting. But after that encounter she talked about him a lot.
âWhen am I going to meet him, darling?â I asked.
Amy was evasive, which was probably, I learned later, because Blake was in a relationship. Amy knew about this, so initially you could say that Amy was âthe other womanâ. And although she knew that he was seeing someone else, it was only about a month after theyâd met that she had his name tattooed over her left breast. It was clear that she loved him â that they loved each other â but it was also clear that Blake had his problems. It was a stormy relationship from the start.
A few weeks after theyâd met, Blake told Amy that heâd finished with the other girl, and Amy, who never did anything by halves, was now fully obsessed with him.
A couple of months later I saw Blake for the first time, although I didnât actually meet him then, at the Queenâs Arms, in Primrose Hill, north-west London, where Iâd arranged to meet Amy one Sunday lunchtime. I walked into the busy pub and saw her sitting on some fellaâs lap. They were kissing passionately. The pub was packed and I thought, This isnât on. I got hold of her, took her outside and gave her a piece of my mind â she shouldnât have been doing that in a public place. We had a bit of a row and Amy told me she had been kissing her boyfriend, Blake. I said I didnât care who he was, and I was about to walk off when I stopped and turned round. âAnd another thing,â I said. âWhatâs with all the big hair and the makeup? Who are you meant to be?â
âDonât you like it, Dad? Itâs my new look.â
I thought sheâd looked nicer when she was a bit smarter, though I had to admit the look suited her, but I didnât say so then.
âCome on, Dad, come and have a drink with us,â she said.
I was still seething so I made some excuse. It was none of my business where and whom my twenty-one-year-old daughter kissed but Iâve always been a bit hot-headed, especially where my kids are concerned.
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Amyâs old friend Tyler James says that he noticed a massive change in Amy when she first met Blake. To Tyler, the day Amy met Blake, she fell in love with him, and after that they wouldnât leave each otherâs side. He became the centre of Amyâs world and everything revolved around him. Tyler told me that the first time Blake visited Amyâs flat at Jeffreyâs Place, he offered Tyler a line of cocaine while they were watching TV â not something that Tyler or Amy would normally have come across. Amy was, as I said, dead against class-A âchemicalâ drugs, as she called them, and while Blake was doing cocaine, Amy stuck to smoking cannabis (which led to her lyrics on âBack to Blackâ , âyou love blow and I love puffâ). And she was still drinking.
I found out later that Blake had been dabbling in heroin when Amy had first met him. Tyler, who was staying at the Jeffreyâs Place flat at the time, would wake up in the morning and throw up because of passive heroin intake but he didnât know for sure that Blake was a user until Amy told him.
Tyler wasnât the only one who saw a change in Amy. Nick Shymansky remembers a pivotal moment around this time when he called Amy from a ski trip. She sounded âreally differentâ. âIâve just met this guy,â she told Nick. âYouâll really love him. Heâs called Blake and weâve fallen madly in love.â
Nick came back from his trip and saw immediately that Amy must have lost a stone and a half in weight while he had been away. She started phoning him in the early hours of the morning when she was drunk. One night she called saying she had had a row with Blake and was in a pub in Camden and wanted Nick to pick her up. Nick always felt protective towards