A bottle of Shiraz down, I’m stretched out on the sofa waiting for Horror at Midnight to kick in. Some sleazy backwater cable affair. Killing minutes, I skim the channels to stave off sleep, or maybe despair.My fingers backtrack, alerted to the prospect of danger. The screen settles. That pretentious late-night BBC art’s magazine programme A Room of Their Own. The earnest transmission of cutting-edge culture leaves no room for doubt. Heavy lidded, my eyes barely register Sasha’s resurrection, the last shot at a new moment in the sun.The presenter’s introduction has unsettled my mid-life complacency:”Tonight’s guest is probably better known as Sasha Madden, onetime queen of grunge, and husband of rock legend Phil Madden. A woman with more feathers in her cap than most, now with her second novel about to hit the best-seller list, she can add celebrated author to her list of accolades. Good evening, Sasha — or should I call you Coral.””Good evening, Myfanwy. Thank you for having me on the show. Sasha is fine.””So do tell, Sasha, why the nome de Plume?”Well, Myfanwy…”The camera zooms in for a close-up of Coral/Sasha, and I’m spiralling sideways into an improbable past I wish I’d never lived. It as a sobering moment to see Sasha after all this time, her terminal celebrity status in remission. Ten years out of the public eye, she resurfaces re-created. The sight of her radiant from the camera’s attention opens the lid on the satin-lined coffin of an anger I thought I’d buried years ago. Beneath the freshly plastered veneer of a successful authoress, the teenage Sasha I once knew beams out at me beneath the studio lights. The last time I was blessed by her company was sharing a table at the Emmy’s with her and husband Phil — good old Phil anticipating the stage, his time to Sefaköy escort bayan step up and accept his award. Outstanding Contribution to Music my arse! Even back then it had been six years since I last fucked Sasha. The band was no more, Phil flying solo. She’d put on weight, had eyes dead as roadkill. But on the telly, gushing about her new book launch, Sasha is no longer the self-caricature of burnt-out rock-chick. Bitter, decaying Sasha is gone, replaced by the sassy acute intelligence of Coral Savage, a being who illuminates the studio with her cleverness, her apt nods and smiles.She talks about her writing, her life in Wales, her family and plans for the future.”I just had to get away from The Business. I needed to discover the essential me. It was a Dark Night of the Soul, believe you me, Myfanwy!” There is a thrill in her voice when she moves on to talk of her “Epiphany”. Later Sasha hints of a move to The States. But when Myfanwy asks her about husband Phil — fishing for the morsels the viewers are hoping for, — resentment curdles her voice. This appearance is supposed to be her moment, her chance to shine again. But as always, all roads lead back to Phil Madden. Phil was a band-mate, friends way before I began to fuck Sasha. I would fuck her every-which-way, long and hard whenever the opportunity arose. Mostly in her marital bed, those endless afternoons when Phil was busy mixing and putting the finishing touches to our Difficult Sixth. Phil! Always the perfectionist. Yep, I was fucking Sasha, weekdays, for the best part of a year. The resonance of so many betrayals. Mine, hers, Phil’s — but mainly mine. Stains on my conscience. Even now I cringe. An attraction to the eighteen-year-old Phil was sown that very first time Yenibosna escort he rolled up at the studio with Sasha in tow. Apart from his looks, I could not let an opportunity like Phil Madden slip away. Intimations of his astonishing talent washed over me at the sound of those opening chords when he sat at the studio piano and played a cover of our first single. But I struggle to pinpoint the moment that admiration soured into resentment, the rage at comprehending the depth and breadth of his creative otherness.But before the rot set in, when the songs fell from him like blessings, I remained spellbound by his almost girlish charm, his ceaselessly-amused eyes and disarming smile. But the attention I’d lavished on Phil Madden was not due only to the astonishing creativity I knew he would bring to the band. Even before I came to understand I was in the presence of a someone daemon-driven, my aim had not been true. It was not altruism that compelled me to talk the other band members into accepting him as the keyboard player. A deeper motive lay behind auditioning Phil for the band. It was merely a first step to bedding his then seventeen-year-old girlfriend, the astonishingly coy, and incomparably beautiful, Sasha Cornwall. *******It is thirty years since I first met Phil Madden. Today is the first of July, and I move around Sasha and Phil’s home virtually, rendered onscreen in crisp HD. With one click of the mouse, my consciousness beams from room to room of that white-walled Art Deco villa called Time Sasha in the den constructing her absurdly twisted plots. There will be friends over from The States. Long Saturday afternoon coastal walks, mid-Atlantic accents and laughter in the after-supper Escort Halkalı lines of blow. Are they still the same people I knew, loved, fucked? Do they remain slaves to the appetites I encouraged, nurtured in them both? I try not to dwell on that. Instead, I speculate about what the dynamic between Phil and me might be if we were ever to meet again. His A-list fabulousness long ago eclipsed my previous advantage of years, of hipness, mere technique. What a whirlwind my suave and groundless sense of superiority has reaped. Would I be to Phil what he was once to me: the little man?I take consolation knowing I’ve had them both, gloat over how Phil squirmed that first time I buried my cock in his tight, late-teen arse. I smile smugly remembering that neither part of the happy couple knew I was fucking the other. The dream was for me to lie between them both, have the pair share me, make a fuss and adore me. I would broach my yearning with Sasha in the warm diffusion of sex’s afterglow. But word it carefully so as not alarm her. The last thing I wanted was to betray her husband’s indiscretions. But she would not take me on, evaded my hints as if an invitation to spend Christmas with the inlaws.Out-of-body on the balcony of Tide the ones from which Phil still shovels in the royalties; the ones I was stupid enough to allow Sasha to sing.After the telephone conversation, I poke around the agent’s site looking for an image of Robyn Hope, the person booked to show me around Tide the house, Sasha and my past are momentarily forgotten.Until the stairs, I remain entranced by her music. But during the ascent, the shift of her buttocks beneath her slacks prompts other thoughts. When we reach the landing, the gallery-like space which skirts and looks down over the entrance vestibule, I tell her:”Your music is as beautiful as you are.” She stops and turns to face me again, a questioning uncertainty in her eyes that causes me to doubt myself. Am I out of order? Have I misread her? But I have unfurled my colours, a boarding party set to swing. “Let me rephrase that: you are…