Mitch said: ‘She’s gone, Jan. Your baby’s gone’

Janis Winehouse stood behind a glass screen staring down at the body of her daughter Amy.

Only a few hours earlier she had sat on the edge of her bed as her partner Richard broke the news Amy was dead at just 27.

“But as I gazed at her, Amy aged nine flashed into my head. When she was young I’d scream at the bottom of the stairs, calling for her to get up for school. ‘Amy wake up! Amy wake up!’ I’d shout. No ­answer.

“I’d run up and find her asleep. She was impossible to wake up. Now she wouldn’t wake again. She was gone. It was my moment of final acceptance. The time to say goodbye.”

Somehow, despite being racked with grief, Janis bravely found the resolve to face one more challenge – making sure the superstar singer looked perfect at her funeral.

“It was Amy’s curtain call. As a family we’d decided Amy’s funeral should be a party – a celebration of her amazing life.”

So before Amy was placed in her coffin, two of her assistants made sure her make-up was perfect, put her famous black beehive wig on her head and put the Rehab singer in her favourite yellow dress.

Then they placed her in the ­coffin and said “goodbye”.

Janis says: “It was an act of love. She went out looking like the ­superstar the whole world fell in love with.”

When Amy’s body was found at her home in Camden, North London on July 23, many thought she had been on one of the drink and drug binges which blighted her life.

But in an ­exclusive interview Janis tells how Amy was ­winning the ­battle against her demons. And she reveals the singer was ­planning to settle down with fiancé Reg Traviss and was even dreaming of starting a family. Janis, 55, agreed to speak to the Sunday ­Mirror to put the record straight about her ­daughter’s final weeks – making it clear she was clean of drugs.

As she talks at a London hotel, anguished Janis touches one of Amy’s necklaces and fiddles with one of her rings. She has worn Amy’s jewellery every day since her ­daughter died and they bring her comfort. She is also comforted by the fact she saw Amy the day before she died.

She says: “I’m so grateful for that. I called round with my partner ­Richard to see how Amy was.

“She had an ‘Amy look’ that day. She slept a lot and it looked like she’d just woken up. But she was sober and happy and calm. She was in tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt and flicking through an old photo album. Amy kept saying, ‘Oh Mum, Alex (her brother) was such a lovely baby wasn’t he?’. She was talking about Reg and how much she loved him.

“She was excited about going to a wedding the next day and had all these dresses hanging up to choose from. It was just Amy as I loved her – being herself and chatting to me about the future.”

When Janis got up to leave, Amy leapt up to give her a hug, neither of them knowing it would be their last. Janis says: “She said, ‘I love you, Mummy’. And I said, ‘love you too baby’. I can still hear her saying that as I sit here now.”

The next day Janis was at home in North London when the ­heartbreaking news came that Amy had been found dead. She says: “Richard received a phone call from Amy’s father Mitch. He called me upstairs.

“He said, ‘She’s gone, Jan. Your baby’s gone’. I was stunned. Straight away there was a sense of ­denial… that it wasn’t real. That is why I had to go and see Amy.”

Janis, who suffers terribly from ­multiple sclerosis, has relied heavily on the support of family and friends.

She says: “We had so many people around us. Thousands of letters arrived, many from old friends who had grown up with Amy recalling how wonderful she was. The warmth was amazing. I was ­carried away on a wave of emotion.”

As the news was made public ­hundreds of people arrived to set up a vigil outside Amy’s home. Janis says: “I found that very touching. When I visited to see it for myself ­people came and said, ‘Thank you for Amy’. I realised I was not ­grieving alone. It was comforting.”

Since Amy’s death she has not been able to listen to her songs despite ­carrying them all around with her on her iPod. “It’s too painful to hear Amy’s music or see her on the TV,” she says.

“There’ve been lots of tears. The bad days are very bad. There are bits of time when it just gets me.

“Often it’s at night. It will hit me… this is it, this is reality.” She says Amy has visited her twice in her dreams. And Janis tries to cope with the dark days by reliving cherished memories. She says: “I think of her singing. Amy was always singing. As a kid you’d sometimes have to say, ‘Amy be quiet’. Being a singer was all she wanted to be.

“When I’m sad I think back to one ­performance when she was 13 performing at the Everyman ­Theatre in Hampstead. She was singing on stage and I looked at Mitch and said, ­‘Blimey she’s good isn’t she?”

One of the ­toughest things for her to cope with has been the fact that Amy was rebuilding her life when she died.

Three years ago Janis warned her she would be dead in a year unless she quit drugs. Her words seemed to shock her ­daughter into action. She says: “As a family we did ­absolutely everything we could to help Amy. But eventually there came a point when she realised herself that the drugs simply had to stop.

“From November 2008 to the day she died I believe she was free of drugs. She managed to do it through her own will, which made me very proud.

“Up until then she’d been a ­nightmare. She was the sort of person who, once she had made her mind up on ­something, would do it.

“But Amy was working ­really hard to turn her life around. And she was. Amy was in a tough ­battle. Part of me feels comfort that she’s no longer in pain.”

Despite her hard-partying ­image Amy did not enjoy ­parties as a girl.

Janis says: “I fear the drug habit developed to help her become more comfortable with that showbiz life.”

In the days after Amy’s death there were reports she may have taken drugs on the night she died. Janis has taken time to speak to many of Amy’s friends who saw her and they all say she did not.

She says: “The last person to see Amy alive was her ­bodyguard Andrew Morris. It was 2am. She’d gone up to her bedroom and was playing the drums. Andrew said she should keep the noise down in case she upset the ­neighbours, so Amy went to bed.”

One theory about her death is that she had a rare ­reaction to the prescription ­tranquilliser ­Librium. But Janis sums it up simply: “Her body said, ‘OK, I’ve had enough’. It couldn’t take it any more. It was in a sense of shock at ­coming off the ­alcohol.”

Since Amy’s death Janis has set up the Amy Winehouse ­Foundation to help save young lives.

She says: “Amy would have been proud of the ­foundation. She loved people and she adored ­children. She was an incredible person who ­everyone loved: kind, ­sincere and ­generous.”

Many of Amy’s relatives have been involved with ­helping set it up, along with ­fiancé Reg.

She says: “I remember the moment Amy met him. She phoned and said, ‘Mum I’ve met this man… I’ve fallen in love’. I was delighted. When I met him I thought he was great.

“Amy wanted kids with Reg and to turn the house in Camden into a family home. It’s fitting the home will now be used for the foundation.”

But one person Janis will not talk to again is Amy’s junkie ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, 33, who introduced her to drugs. He is rumoured to be planning a tell-all book about his life with Amy.

She says: “I have nothing nice to say about him. I would prefer him not to write the book as it will bring back too many memories.”

Her work to promote the foundation took her to America where she met Tony Bennett, who recorded Amy’s final song Body and Soul, and told Janis the singer was a “special girl”.

But she says her daughter’s legacy is best described by what happened as she made her way home from the US.