The day Amy died

I’d like to say that the first time I cuddled my new-born baby daughter, on 14 September 1983, was a moment that will live with me always, but it wasn’t nearly as straightforward as that.

Some days time drags, and others the hours just fly. That day was one of those, when everything seemed to happen at once. Unlike our
son Alex, who’d been born three and a half years earlier, our daughter came into the world quickly, popping out in something of a rush,
like a cork from a bottle. She arrived in typical Amy fashion – kicking and screaming. I swear she had the loudest cry of any baby I’ve ever heard. I’d like to tell you that it was tuneful but it wasn’t – just loud. Amy was four days late, and nothing ever changed: for the whole of her life she was always late.

Amy was born at the Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, north London, not far from where we lived in Southgate. And because the moment itself was quickly over, her family – grandparents, greataunts, uncles and cousins – soon crowded in, much as they did for almost every event in our family, good or bad, filling the spaces around Janis’s bed to greet the new arrival.

I’m a very emotional guy, especially when it comes to my family, and, holding Amy in my arms, I thought, I’m the luckiest man in the world. I was so pleased to have a daughter: after Alex was born, we’d hoped our next child might be a girl, so he could have a sister. Janis and I had already decided what to call her. Following a Jewish tradition, we gave our children names that began with the same
initial as a deceased relative, so Alex was named after my father, Alec, who’d died when I was sixteen. I’d thought that if we had another boy he’d be called Ames. A jazzy kind of name. "Amy," I said, thinking that didn’t sound quite as jazzy. How wrong I was.

So Amy Jade Winehouse – Jade after my stepfather Larry’s father Jack – she became.

Amy was beautiful, and the spitting image of her older brother. Looking at pictures of the two of them at that age, I find it difficult to tell them apart. The day after she was born I took Alex to see his new little sister, and we took some lovely pictures of the two of them,
Alex cuddling Amy.

I hadn’t seen those photographs for almost 28 years, until one day in July 2011, the day before I was due to go to New York, I got a call from Amy. I could tell right away that she was very excited.

"Dad, Dad, you’ve got to come round," she said.

"I can’t, darling," I told her. "You know I’ve got a gig tonight and I’m flying off early in the morning."

She was insistent. "Dad, I’ve found the photographs. You’ve got to come round." Suddenly I knew why she was so excited. At some point
during Amy’s numerous moves, a box of family photographs had been lost, and she had clearly come across it that morning. "You’ve
got to come over."

In the end I drove over in my taxi to Camden Square and parked outside her house. "I’m just popping in," I said, knowing full well how
hard it was to say no to her. "You know I’m busy today."

"Oh, you’re always going too quick," she responded. "Dad, stay."

I followed her in, and she had the photographs she’d found spread out on a table. I looked down at them. I had better ones but these obviously meant a lot to her. There was Alex holding new-born Amy, and there was Amy as a teenager – but all the rest were of family and friends.

She picked up a photo of my mum. "Wasn’t Nan beautiful?" she said. Then she held up the picture of Alex and herself. "Oh, look at
him," she added, a mixture of pride and sibling rivalry in her voice. She went through the collection, picking up one after another,
talking to me about each one, and I thought, This girl, famous all over the world, someone who’s brought joy to millions of people –
she’s just a normal girl who loves her family. I’m really proud of her. She’s a great kid, my daughter.

It was easy to be with her that day: she was a lot of fun. Eventually, after an hour or so, it was time for me to go, and we hugged. As I held her I could feel that she was her old self: she was becoming strong again – she’d been working with weights in the gym she’d put into her house.

"When you’re back, we’ll go into the studio to do that duet," she said, as we walked to the door. We had two favourite songs, 'Fly Me To The Moon’ and ‘Autumn Leaves’, and Amy wanted us to record one or other of them together. "We’re going to rehearse properly," she added.

"I’ll believe it when I see it," I said, laughing. We’d had this conversation many times over the years. It was nice to hear her talking like
that again. I waved goodbye out of the cab. I never saw my darling daughter alive again.

I arrived in New York on the Friday, and had a quiet evening alone. The following day I went to see my cousin Michael and his wife
Alison at their apartment on 59th Street – Michael had immigrated to the US a few years earlier when he’d married Alison. They now
had three-month-old twins, Henry and Lucy, and I was dying to meet them. The kids were great and I had Henry sitting on my lap
when Michael got a call from his father, my uncle Percy, who lives in London. Michael passed the phone to me. There was the usual stuff: "Hello, Mitch, how are you? How’s Amy?" I told him I’d seen Amy just before I’d flown out and she was fine.

My mobile rang. The caller ID said, "Andrew – Security". Amy often rang me using the phone of her security guard Andrew so I told my uncle, "I think that’s Amy now," and passed the house phone back to Michael. I still had Henry on my lap as I answered my phone.

"Hello, darling," I said. But it wasn’t Amy, it was Andrew. I could barely make out what he was saying.

All I could decipher was: "You gotta come home, you gotta come home."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"You’ve got to come home," he repeated.

My world drained away from me. "Is she dead?" I asked.

And he said, "Yes."
 

Amy, My Daughter by Mitch Winehouse is published by HarperCollins.