Amy Winehouse and Blake are killing each other,says her mother-in-law

If Georgette, and her husband, primary school headteacher Giles, 42, Blake's stepfather - she was divorced from Blake's father, retired businessman Lance Fielder, some 20 years ago - had their way, the young couple would still be at the Causeway Centre in Essex, halfway through a six-week rehab stay.

But they are not, and Georgette believes both her son and Amy are in complete denial of their problems.

They cannot see, she says, how much danger they are in or how destructive their relationship is, based on an unhealthy codependency, obsessive love and a shared fondness for hard drugs and alcohol which has, apparently, deepened since their marriage in May.

She believes their only hope of survival is to part, arguing that they each bring out the very worst in the other, but concedes this is unlikely while they remain hopelessly in each other's thrall and under the influence of drugs.

"Blake has texted me most days from St Lucia saying they are having a nice time," says Georgette, who lives in an immaculate double-fronted house in a pretty Nottinghamshire village with Giles and their two sons, aged 15 and 14.

Ever since Amy fell in love two years ago with Blake, a film industry runner and heavy drug user, the finger of suspicion for her increasingly erratic behaviour has pointed at him.

When the couple briefly split up last year, he inspired her best-selling No 1 album Back To Black, but their subsequent marriage has brought no stability.

Instead, Amy's self-harming has become more apparent, her emaciated frame ever more stick-like, her drug-taking more pronounced, her drinking more ferocious.

'Wino', in recent weeks, has been re-christened 'No Show', for her failure to turn up to scheduled concerts.

Despite criticism from Amy's father Mitch, Georgette is no apologist for her son.

In fact, she is the first to condemn his drug taking.

"I'd like to be able to say my son was wonderful until he met Mitch's daughter, and Mitch would like to be able to say that Amy was wonderful until she met my son, but neither would be true," says Georgette.

"She and Blake are two troubled souls who are as bad as one another.

"We like Amy, she's a talented and lovely woman, but she clearly has a lot of problems, as does our son.

"From what we understand she was dabbling in drugs and had an eating disorder long before she met Blake.

"We certainly don't blame her or Blake in isolation for what's happening - they are equally responsible for the situation they are in and they have to be equally responsible and determined to get out of it."