Amy Winehouse dead: Blake Fielder-Civil's mother's plea who insists couple were still in love
Blake Fielder-Civil's mother, Georgette, has spoken for the first time since Amy's death: 'We all played our part in what happened to her,' she says
Earlier this week, Georgette Fielder-Civils husband made a grim prediction. He said I had to prepare for the worst about our son Blake, she says. That we would be burying him within five years.
A heartbreaking notion for any mother, but one that Georgette finds it difficult to contradict, given the events of recent days.
Last weekend, Blakes former wife, Amy Winehouse, was found dead at her north London home at the age of just 27.
While the cause of her death has still not yet been established, there is no doubt that drugs were responsible for turning the once vivacious singer into an emaciated wreck who would lurch publicly from one crisis to another.
Amy was locked in a grim downward spiral with which Georgette, 48, can all too readily identify. A respectable, middle-class mother from a picturesque Nottinghamshire village, she has been left helpless in the face of her own privately-educated sons descent from promising musician into hopeless addict.
Her greatest fear now is that it will not be long before he follows Amy to the grave.
She has also had to contend with suggestions from Amys fans and family that it was Winehouses chaotic five-year relationship with her son that sent the singer off the rails that effectively, Blake has Amys blood on his h! ands.
It is a sentiment that fills her with sorrow, and one which she believes masks a more unpalatable truth.
I am not asking anyone to say poor Blake he made his choices and he has to live with them, she says in her first interview since Amys death.
Im not trying to defend his behaviour and I know him for what he is: hes an addict and he has done some terrible things. He feels enormous grief and responsibility for some of the things that have happened, as well he should. But I also think hes been made the fall guy for what happened to Amy, when the truth is, in fact, far more complicated.
We all played our part in what happened to her. I have had to look deep into my heart and wonder if I could have helped, done things differently.
Destructive relationship: Amy Winehouse met Blake Fielder-Civil in 2004 and there began a partnership that saw them both descend into drug and alcohol abuse
Yet Georgettes main complaint is that Amys father, Mitch, was virulently opposed to her relationship with Blake, believing the young addict was a disastrous influence on her.
Many would find his concerns only too understandable yet Georgette insists, whatever his own failings, that Blakes devotion to Amy was the mainstay of the singers life.
Amy frequently said that the only person who could fix her was Blake.
She spoke to Blake the whole time before she died. Friends of Blakes have told me that she telephoned him in prison the day before she died and asked if he could arrange for a visiting order.
Wrecked: This now infamous image was taken as the couple left London's luxury Sanderson Hotel. Amy is bruised, smudged and has blood on her feet, while Blake's face has been scratched
But she also knew that it would cause trouble. In one of the last conversations I had with her she said: I cant tell Dad Im talking to you as hed go mad and its not worth it.
Blake and Amy could have had a chance of happiness I truly believe that but only if their families were both behind them. I honestly believe that if theyd been given another chance, Amy might still be with us. Now we will never know.
It is, of course, all too easy to rewrite history, to cast Amy and Blake as some latter day Ryan ONeal and Ali MacGraw in Love Story. In fact, even Georgette has to concede that their relationship, which commenced over an alcohol-fuelled night in a London pub in early 2004, was complex and often tawdry a heady and drug-fuelled courtship followed by an equally narcotic-addled and short-lived marriage.
Volatile: Amy with Blake at the MTV Awards in 2007, left. A year later, she attended Snaresbrook Crown Court in London with Georgette, right, where she saw Blake jailed for 27 months
Yet, Georgette insists that behind the grim public snapshots of the tattooed couples relationship bloodied fights in the street included were two intelligent young people who were deeply in love and shared a touching bond.
Yes, they were passionate, and they fought, but they were also just a young couple deeply in love and I have lots of ordinary memories which I treasure, she says.
The Amy I knew would spend hours rifling through her wardrobe to find clothes for me to try on, or turn up at my beauty salon to get her nails painted and share a gossip. Shed ring up for a chat saying hello Mumsie.
There were lots of times where the three of us would sit round drinking cups of tea and eating cake while talking about music. Amy would be snuggled up to Blake saying look at him, isnt he gorgeous. On those occasions, drugs seemed very far away.
Amy was also kind and loving towards Blakes brothers, Harry, 18, and 17-year-old Freddy. Blake and Amy would take them to the cinema, or into town. She was sweet with them, remembers Georgette.
Out of control: Amy was herself no stranger to law-breaking, pictured here in 2010 arriving at Milton Keynes Magistrates Court before she admitted common assault
Thi s warmth did not envelop the entire extended family, however: to say that there was never any love lost between Blake and Amys parents is an understatement.
Taxi-driver Mitch, who was this week photographed handing his late daughters clothes out to fans camped outside her North London home, has categorically blamed Blake for introducing Amy to Class A drugs.
Meanwhile, his former wife Janis, a pharmacist who suffers from multiple sclerosis, accused her erstwhile son-in-law of being a boy on the make suggestions Georgette categorically rejects.
I am not making excuses for my son, but other friends of Amys have spoken out recently to acknowledge that Amy was using drugs before she met Blake, she says. The point is that Mitch did not like Blake from the beginning.
Even after they were married, they never had any room to breathe Blake used to joke that it felt like Mitch was at the end of their bed.
She goes on: Even Amy sensed it to a degree. Blake would joke about it and Amy would giggle along with us. In my opinion, the relationship didnt have a chance while he was on the scene.
Yet it cannot be denied by any sane person that Blake more than played his part in the unravelling of the relationship and the unravelling of poor Amy.
Six months after the couple married in May 2007 they eloped to Miami, exchanging vows in a 70 ceremony witnessed by strangers he was remanded in custody accused of perverting the cause of justice relating to a charge of GBH with intent on a pub landlord.
Disapproving: Amy Winehouse's mother Janis and father Mitch, pictured here last week lookin! g at tri butes left outside the late singer's home, never liked Blake and believed he introduced her to hard drugs
In June 2008 he pleaded guilty to both offences and was jailed for 27 months, not emerging from prison until February 2009 .
Hardly an ideal start to married life. Yet Amy, it has to be said, retained a strong, almost visceral affection for her husband, which continued even after they divorced in spring 2009.
Among Georgettes treasured possessions is a box of letters and cards, written in Amys distinctive slanted writing, which are testament to the couples continuing bond.
Included are child-like Valentines cards, one with Snoopy on the cover, and letters Amy wrote to Blake while he was in prison. In one, sent in January 2009, she wrote: Despite any short-term or material successes our marriage is my proudest achievement and your last name is the proudest jewellery Ive ever walked in. Yours always, Amy.
The letters continued into last year. In February 2010, Amy sent Blake a storyboard of their relationship, signing herself your wife, on paper or not and, in an accompanying letter writing of her desire to carry his child.
Then, please God, hopefully, Id have your baby kicking to come out of me, she wrote. Fix me! Let me fix you! Weve always looked after each other, ALWAYS.
Their contact, Georgette says, remained regular until the end, even though both of them started new relationships following their divorce.
Grief: Mitch Winehouse is consoled by friends while he attends his daughter funeral at Golders Green Crematorium in north London
Amy had a relationship with film director Reg Traviss, and Blake had an on-off affair with ! mother-o f-three Sarah Aspin, 33.
Amy knew about Sarah and she hated the idea of it, says Georgette. She would phone up and say: I want her out of his life.
She didnt think Sarah was good enough for him. But she knew it was an odd situation.
On one occasion she said to me: Its really strange talking to you when Ive got another boyfriend. But I love Blake and Ill always love him. Its just the way it is, Georgette says.
Georgette, it is clear, always remained fond of her former daughter-in-law. When I saw pictures of her on stage in Belgrade, drunk and in a mess a few weeks ago, my heart went out to her. I thought whos looking after her?.
Where were her managers? Why did no one stop her?
But surely no one is better qualified than Georgette to know that it takes a strong person indeed to stand in the way of a determined addict. Despite her best efforts, Blake still seems hellbent on a path of destruction.
Raised in middle-class comfort by Georgette and her teacher husband Giles, who took on Blake as an infant and raised him as his own after Georgettes relationship with his biological father broke down, Blake was much loved and educated at the private Felton Fleet school in Surrey, until the age of 13. He then went on to Bourne Grammar school in Lincolnshire.
But he dropped out of school aged 16 to pursue his dream of working in the music industry. From there it was aswift descent into drugs, despite desperate interventions from his parents. When Blake met Amy, the dial quickly cranked up. Together, the pair were toxic.
With hindsight, Georgette admits she should have done more. Time and again you go over things in your head, tormenting yourself. I wish Id pushed for Amy and Blake to go to rehab before they got married.
Ihave to accept responsibility for not dealing with things in the ! right wa y, but I was in denial. I didnt want to see the truth.
Hermyopia has, undoubtedly, had a devastating knock-on effect. In early 2009, Giles left the family home after 25 years of marriage saying he could no longer cope with his wifes continuing support for Blake.
He felt the rollercoaster would never stop and that Blake would always let me down, she says.
She closed down her hair and beauty business, unable to combine running it while trying to marshal her sons recovery.
Yetfor a time, the signs were promising: When Blake left prison in February 2009, he went straight from his cell into a six-month rehab programme. He got clean, he had a job, a flat in Sheffield, and a new circle of friends who werent drug-users, says Georgette.
Gilesand I were really proud and pleased. But a rekindled friendship with someone he had met in rehab was to be his downfall, she says. They turned up on his doorstep with a bag full of gear [drugs] and that wasthat. Within weeks he was a full-blown addict again. It was heartbreaking.
The ensuing chaotic, pitiful year featured myriad failed interventions including enrolling Blake on a methadone programme hopes raised and promises broken. I was at my wits end. I would bring Blake home to look after him but then he would disappear, Georgette says.
I felt torn in two. I had a duty of care to my younger sons, but I didnt want to abandon Blake, she adds.
Tragic waste: Tributes outside Amy's home show the devastation of fans. Blake, her ex-husband, is said to be so overcome with grief that he can't get out of his prison bed
Matters came to a head when, during Blakes 29th birt! hday gat hering in April, she found him and another addict friend in Harrys bedroom, apparently about to smoke heroin.
It was too much. Years of pain and anger came bubbling up. I had tried and tried and hed just let me down time and again. I realised I had lost the battle, that there was nothing more that I could do if I and my other sons were to survive, he had to go. He left that night.
It was the last time she set eyes on her son: until news of Amys death, Georgette had made no attempts at contact, not even attending court when, in June, Blake stood trial for burglary and possession of an imitation firearm for holding up a jewellery store.
It was a new low, one which saw him imprisoned once more, sentenced to 32 months, which he is serving at Armley Prison in Leeds.
Going to prison once was bad enough. But twice? Georgette shakes her head. I dont even recognise him any more.
Such is her sense of alienation, she says, that when she received a phone call from a friend last Saturday afternoon warning of bad news, she initially assumed something had happened to Blake.
My first thought was, My god, Blake, whats happened now? she says. When I realised it was Amy, I felt very very sad. It was difficult to absorb that she was gone for ever. It still is.
For all her anger with her son, her first thought, nonetheless, was for him. I didnt want him to hear about it from the news so I rang the prison and asked to pass a message via the prison governor. It wasnt ideal but youve got to remember where he is thats the sad reality of where hes ended up.
Initial signs, she says, are not good: having attempted to visit Blake earlier this week a visit she chose to coincide with Amys funeral, to which she wasnt invited she was told he was unable to get out of bed.
He has taken news of her death very badly, she says. Im worried sick.
Her best hope, she says, is that Amys horribly untimely death might act as a wake-up call for Bl! ake.
But a bigger part of her worries that he will be driven by a macabre desire to be reunited with his former wife.
In many ways I feel like I have lost my son already, she says. The reality is that were all losers here theres not a winner among us.
And that sentiment, at least, is something which every major player in this tragic affair must surely agree.
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