It was long past midday when Janis Winehouse walked into the suite at the Four Seasons hotel in Hook, Hampshire.
Her daughter Amy hadn't bothered to get dressed.
She was sitting hunched on the bed wrapped in a towelling robe, her face a sickly white and devoid of make-up, her trademark beehive wig abandoned on the dressing table.
For Janis, it was a distressing but not wholly unexpected sight.
For many months she has watched helplessly as her daughter succumbed to the dark temptations that are an inherent part of the music scene.
She has witnessed Amy's transformation from bright and affectionate little girl to teenage jazz and soul sensation to the deeply troubled star she is today.
Amy is 23. Her once shapely figure is now skeletal, her arms are covered in a criss-cross of scars after years of self-harming, while her addiction to drugs is running perilously out of control.
Last week she checked into a drugs rehabilitation centre after taking an overdose of substances said to include heroin, cocaine, ketamine and marijuana, only to emerge three days later to go drinking in the pubs near her Camden home.
Amy's mother Janis feels powerless to stop her famous daughter's addiction to drugs
She and her husband of three months, Blake Fielder-Civil, have since returned to the £1,000-a-week Causeway centre in Essex.
But Janis knows, from bitter experience, that Amy's troubles are still far from over.
Janis, a pharmacist, has never spoken publicly before about her fears for her only daughter. But in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, she tries to explain Amy's descent in heartbreaking detail.
A trim 5ft 4in tall, Janis looks much younger than her 52 years. Her modest, two-bedroom apartment in Barnet, North London, is littered with the signs of her daughter's success.
On one wall there is a promotional poster for Amy's debut album, Frank. On the mantelpiece above the gas fire sits her 2007 Mojo Award for best song, the now ironically titled Rehab, written about her decision not to go into a treatment clinic.
But what was once a source of pride has now become a reminder of the daughter she has, in many respects, lost.
Janis says: "My son Alex and I drove down to the hotel to see her the day after she had the 'accident'.
"I thought I was prepared for what was to come but when we walked into her room, she looked terrible. She was lucky to be alive.
"Alex said to her, 'You're going to kill yourself. You're not going to live to 25, you know that don't you? Are you happy your life is like this?'
"She didn't have an answer. She didn't say anything, not a word. She was curled up on the bed and we told her she would have to go to rehab. She was saying, 'No, no, no. I don't want to go.'"
Janis is separated from Amy's father Mitchell and he had travelled separately to see her. Janis says: "Her father warned her that he would do whatever it took, legally, to get here there.
"She said she'd only go if she could go with Blake. It was at least a start. Mitchell and Alex went down to start making arrangements while I stayed upstairs with Amy.
"It was the first time I'd been alone with her since before Christmas. I hugged her and kept saying, 'What are you doing to yourself?' I wasn't angry. I'm past anger. It's almost futile.
"Right now I don't even think this is Amy's fault. I think her brain's addled. This isn't Amy. It's as if her whole life's turned into a stage performance.
"A part of me has prepared myself for this over the years. She has said to me, 'I don't think I'm going to survive that long.'
"It's almost as though she's created her own ending. She's on a path of self-mutilation, quite literally. What else are all the tattoos about? I hate them. They're horrible. It's like a sickness but she cannot see it.
"For most of her life, I've been aware of needing to keep an eye on her. She's reckless, very determined and if she wants to do something she will just do it. No one can stop her once she's made her mind up but she never thinks of the consequences."
According to Janis, it has always been this way, ever since Amy was a child and the family lived in Southgate, North London.
Janis was a pharmacy technician, Mitchell, now 56, a double-glazing salesman. They both worked hard to give Amy and Alex, now 27 and a playwright, the best start in life.
Janis took an Open University science degree before studying at the London School of Pharmacy. They moved from a cramped two-bedroom flat to a Thirties semi to a pretty three-bedroom Victorian terrace.
Janis says: "Amy was a beautiful child, always busy, always curious. She was always very cheery but she was also shy. She's never been an easy child."
Matters were not helped when Janis and Mitchell split up when Amy was nine. "We never argued," says Janis. "We'd had a very agreeable marriage but he was never there.
"He was a salesman so he was away a lot, but for a long time there was also another woman, Jane, who became his second wife. I think Mitchell would have liked to have both of us but I wasn't happy to do that.
"Mitchell and Amy were close. Her father would sing Sinatra to her and because he always sang, she was always singing, even in school. Her teachers had to tell her to stop doing it in lessons.
"People talk a lot about the anger in Amy's songs. I think a lot of it was that her father wasn't there. Now he's trying to make up for that and he's spending more time with her but what he's doing now is what he should have been doing then."
After her parents' break-up, Amy's independent streak became even more pronounced. She had always performed in school plays and local amateur groups and when she was 12 she organised an audition for herself at London's Sylvia Young Theatre School and won a scholarship.
Janis says: "At about the same time, my mother-in-law and I took the kids to Cyprus on holiday. There was a talent show and she really wanted to enter it.
"She did and we sat there listening to her and I think that's when I knew that she had something really special.
"But I would have been happy for her to stay at the local school where she had been before." In the event, Amy spent just three years at Sylvia Young's before she was asked to leave. Janis says: "The principal phoned up and asked me to come in and see him. He said, 'I think you should take her away.'
"He didn't want children who weren't going to get good grades and Amy wasn't going to. She was very bright but she was always messing around.
"The same day, I had to take the family cat Katie to the vet. I dropped off the cat, went to the school and then went back to the vet's. We had the cat put down. My joke is I should have had Amy put down and the cat moved on."
It's a macabre jest but as Amy's world has moved farther and farther apart from her own, Janis has had to develop coping mechanisms in any way she can.
After Sylvia Young's, Janis found Amy a place at The Mount, an independent girls' school in Mill Hill. But after she had taken her GCSEs, she was spotted by a record company, after one of their other acts sent them a demo tape of Amy singing.
Janis says: "We had a meeting with the company because she was still so young they needed our consent to manage her. I wanted her to stay on at school but she said, 'No, this is what I really want.'
"I think she was too young and thereby hangs the tale. Where she's got, she's got too soon. She lacks the maturity to be able to cope."
Amy released her first album, Frank, in October 2003 to worldwide acclaim. It was nominated for two Brit Awards, shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize and turned her into an overnight star.
It was the same year that her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease she battles with a stubborness reminiscent of her daughter. It was a time when Janis needed her daughter close to her, but it was the time that their lives began to diverge.
As Amy became more and more successful, their relationship grew more distant. Janis says: "To begin with, after she left home, she would ring me every day. I was never frightened of losing her because there was always contact.
"Then, once she started travelling more and working in America, I started to feel a detachment. Looking back, it built up over time."
The first sign of real trouble was Amy's admission that she had an eating disorder. Janis says: "She always had a very good appetite. She was never fussy.
"Last summer she performed at a friend's wedding and she was sick in the loos. Then, before Christmas, I was taking her to the dentist and she admitted she had anorexia and bulimia.
"Her self-harming was never apparent. I never knew about it at the time. She would tell me about 'her friend's' problems and she sometimes said that one of them used to cut themselves but I never realised then she might have been talking about herself.
"I've known for a long time that something was wrong but I always thought it was drink. Close family were telling me it was more but I couldn't believe it."
However, Janis could no longer deny the severity of Amy's problems when she married Blake in May. The couple had dated two years previously but had only been back together for a matter of weeks when they decided to wed while on holiday in Miami.
The wedding consisted of a £60 ceremony, a wedding breakfast of burger and chips and a 48-hour hotel room lock-in.
Janis knew nothing about it before it was too late. "My feeling is, she wasn't aware of getting married. I think they were probably both so out of it that when he said, 'Let's do it', she said, 'OK, then.'
"The day before, she told a friend she was going to get married and the friend was really worried because there was no pre-nup, nothing. She also called her father and he begged her not to do it.
"She called me the day after it happened and said, 'We got married.' Luckily I was prepared because Mitchell had warned me this might happen.
"I said, 'Why now?' She just replied, 'Well, the register office wasn't open the next day.' I wasn't surprised. That's Amy. I've learned now not to expect too much."
Of Blake, a supposed music video assistant who never seems to work, she will only say: "I think it's a case of the less said the better."
Janis tries to hide her disappointment and worry but it is clear she is desperately hurt by Amy's behaviour. She doesn't play her CDs in the house and admits: "Sometimes I don't phone her because if I don't phone her, I don't get hurt. She can't just brush me off and say she's too busy or too tired."
It wasn't until a month after the marriage, and Amy's shambolic performance at the Glastonbury Festival, that Janis was able to give her daughter her wedding present.
She says: "It was a kettle because she didn't have one. The last time we visited she had to make a cup of tea by boiling up water in a saucepan.
"She didn't want me to come round. She said she'd just got back from Glastonbury and was tired. But I insisted. Blake was there lounging on the sofa. We said hello but I don't feel that I can connect with Amy when he's around.
"In the end I only stayed ten minutes. I picked up some of her awards, gave her her present and left."
The next time she would see her daughter would be in that hotel suite in Hampshire. She says: "I suppose, even now, I'm in denial. I'm lying to myself that it's all OK because it's the only way I can cope with it all.
"I've had 23 years of Amy having close escapes. As a toddler in her pram she once nearly choked on Cellophane. Another time she went missing in the park. She's tough, like me; I see that as my gift to her.
"It's hard and it hurts but I know I can't help her right now. She's got to do that for herself and every day I can only hope she's strong enough to do it."
