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Blake’s fault. They weren’t saying this is Amy’s fault. We weren’t doing any of that. We were just trying to calm the troubled waters.’
    They agreed that Amy would take ‘me time’ at a hotel near Fleet in Hampshire, South England.
    ‘Amy … was going to spend four or five days there with her best friends,’ Mitch explains, ‘which I thought … would be great for her. I was going to stay there but I wasn’t going to interfere, just to make sure everything was okay. We all really needed a rest because we had a very traumatic week one way or another. Amy was there the first day on her own, but then Blake turned up. … Her friends disappeared because they had no time for Blake. They understood what his mission in life was. They decided they didn’t want to be a party to it, and Blake was there and the whole time they didn’t even come out of the room.
    ‘So’, I comment, ‘you didn’t even see your daughter?’
    ‘It was difficult,’ he says. ‘They were in the room the whole time and [then] Blake’s parents turned up …. We had a very nice meal with them the first evening. No problems at all.’
    ‘With Amy and Blake [as well]?’ I query.
    ‘With Amy,’ Mitch corrects. ‘Blake was still in his room. Blake was still in bed. My impression, at that point, was that Blake’s parents didn’t understand the extent of his problems.’
    I ask more about Blake’s parents. What do they do?
    ‘His stepfather is a deputy headmaster of a school and his mother is a hairdresser.’
    ‘Are they nice people?’ I say.
    Mitch is strangely reticent. ‘It’s not for me to say – but at the time they seemed very nice people.’
    I ask him if, in retrospect, he thinks the Fielder-Civils didn’t like him.
    ‘No,’ he disagrees. ‘At the time I think they seemed perfectly reasonable people who were working to resolve the problems of two newly married people …
    You were all trying to arbitrate, I suggest.
    ‘… All trying to help and give them both support and my stance was that they both had to go into rehab. Before Blake got there, it was decided that Amy was going to go into rehab. … Blake … turned up and [now] Blake ha[d] to go into rehab as well. And, of course, all the doctors that we had down there and the clinical psychologists they all said the same thing. “You can’t go into rehab together. It’s foolish.”’
    He continues, ‘… Blake, at the time, didn’t want to go into rehab. Amy had to go in, not only because of the drug situation, which at that time I don’t think was the most important factor … it was the eating disorder that was worse than anything. She was very poorly and malnourished. … I think … her peak weight [was] of about eight stone, she went down to about six-and-a-half stone. … it was a considerable loss. …
    ‘In the morning I went into their room and I saw some drug paraphernalia and I reported this to Blake’s stepfather and he just wouldn’t accept it.
    He said I was lying. … I said [to him], “Are you telling me that Blake is not taking drugs?”
    ‘So, there was an altercation and basically from that moment we have not been able to work with his parents. I am not saying anything about them. I am sure in their own way they are very nice people. Unfortunately we have had a terrible relationship with them. … In fact it has got to a point where I … had to instruct solicitors to basically tell them not to contact me because it did get very heated. They blame Amy for everything.’
    I ask Mitch if he thinks Blake’s parents were just in denial then.
    He agrees, ‘They are in denial. He is a fit young man and he is a healthy young man even though he takes drugs …. With Amy, if Amy takes drugs, because she is so little it hits her hard. You look at him and you look at her and it is like she is taking drugs and he doesn’t.
    ‘In their minds they are saying to themselves … [that] he doesn’t need to go [to rehab] and he was very concerned