This was of interest because the man she named as her partner in the tryst was in the public eye, holding a commission from his Excellency the Governor. That man, she says, was Premier Mike Rann.

The Premier denies the friendship was sexual. It was, he says, merely “flirty” and “funny”.

So the violent dangerous psycho pours a coffee with his son chatting in the kitchen, and into the courtyard takes his guest, who fears no fear. Rick Phillips talks for the first time since October, 2009. “I’ve had to deal with the destruction of my marriage and how my children have had to deal with it, and how Michelle’s had to deal with it.”

He measures his words like a pastry chef measuring flour. He is considered. He has had five months of self-imposed silence. He looks across the table, and begins with a question. It is not about himself, nor about Michelle. It is about Sasha Carruozzo, the wife of Premier Rann.

“How’s she coping?” he asks with genuine concern. “How much pride and how much spin does she have to swallow through this whole thing? She’s probably the only person who’s doing it tougher than me.”

Mr Rann was Opposition Leader when he met the attractive blonde working in the Parliamentary dining room. “From what she’s told me,” Mr Phillips said yesterday, “she’d worked there for quite some time. She said it was weird that she was always sent to the Labor Party table to serve drinks and food but never to the Liberal Party table. And he would always come back to her late at night and ask her when she was leaving.”

Last year Michelle Chantelois put it like this: “Sometime after June 2003 I remember meeting him in the hallway one day and we had our usual friendly chat. He pulled out a business card and wrote his mobile number on the card and gave it to me. He said: ‘Call me, call me’.

“I started feeling that there was a bit of chemistry between us. It was a mutual thing. I was aware of it and I knew it wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t healthy because I was married.”

Chantelois claims that late one evening in November 2003, while she was working on her own cleaning up, Mr Rann came into the dining room. “During the discussion he invited me to go to his office.” She claims Rann said to her: “I’d like you to come back to my office for a kiss”.

The friendship took root, and Ms Chantelois says it blossomed and bloomed. But there were thorns in this garden. Rick and Michelle’s business was in some trouble. He’d been working in sales management when a deal went sour.

“I was a contract agent for an engineering sales company. So I’d just bought this house in June 2003 and just bought Michelle a brand new Pajero. Our son was going to St Peters and she was going to her Next Generation gym and everything I could possibly give I gave her.

“But suddenly we – my business, myself and Michelle – were being sued for $2.7 million.

“She had gone to him for more mentoring and discussions over how to deal with this. It was going to mean we would lose this house, be bankrupt for a couple of million dollars. All her family is in America. So, she’s gone to the honourable Mike Rann expecting that you might get some counselling, some sort of mentoring.

“At the time Michelle was 33. She’ll be 40 next week and my friends even now say she’s the most naive 40-year-old you’ll ever meet – and as all my friends say, that’s what we loved about her.

“Under the extreme duress, everything that we’d worked for was going to be lost in that lawsuit. She’s gone to him for some counsel. It’s the honourable Mike Rann, for goodness sake! She’s thinking: ‘Wow, this is the most powerful man in the State. All I’ve got at home is depression and misery. I’m fighting to stay afloat. I don’t know where the next dollar is coming from’.”

It takes two to tango, sang Louis Armstrong, but in a marriage three can step on each other’s toes.

“On the 12th of October 2005, that’s when I first suspected something,” Mr Phillips remembers. “I know that date is for sure because I walked in the bedroom upstairs and she was text messaging, and when I walked in she jumped to her feet and went as red as a beet. I thought, ‘there’s something going on here’, and I rang Telstra the next day to try and find out about the text messages.

“On the 14th of October 2005 I actually had it confirmed by Telstra – I dialled one of the numbers and it was Rann’s mobile number.

“I got his voicemail, so I dialled it again, still got the voicemail – then came home and confronted her.

“She then rang him and warned him that I’d found out about what was going on. The next morning, which happened to be our tenth wedding anniversary, she played me a voicemail message from Rann where he says something like, ‘here’s what’s going to happen … turn your phone off. Sasha will invite you and Rick to a function, you then play the voicemail message to Rick and he’s going to think it’s all above board because we’re inviting you to a function.’

“But the invitation never happened.

“I rang his number a couple of times and thought I was quite controlled in what I was saying. I said: ‘Michelle wants your friendship to continue so as long as your partner knows about it and now that I know about it, why don’t we all get together and have a cup of coffee and discuss the nature of the friendship. By the way you were going to invite us to a function. Why don’t we just get together, have a cup of coffee and come to my house if you don’t want to go somewhere public.’ I put in about two or three phone calls and within two weeks he’d disconnected his phone.”

But Mr Phillips was not at all convinced then, and still is not convinced today, that Sasha actually did know about the nature of the friendship.

“It’s a matter of public record that my phone bills have been laid out for all to see – or Michelle’s phone bills, should I say. She would contact him five times on a Wednesday, five times on a Thursday, five times on a Friday and he would respond. That was the arrangement – she would text him and he would call because he wouldn’t put anything on paper. Then there were no text messages on Saturday or Sunday, but then back to five and so forth on Monday and Tuesday.

“But Rann states that his wife knew of the relationship and was comfortable with it. Michelle had all the time in the world, running kids around Saturday and Sunday, so when I wasn’t there she could have sent him a text message while the boys were playing cricket or doing whatever they were doing. So the only reason I can think of that she didn’t text on a Sunday is because I suspect Rann couldn’t accept the weekend contact, so therefore his wife didn’t know.”

It has to be said that this is merely Mr Phillips’ own suspicion. When the Chantelois allegations became public, Sasha Carruozzo phoned certain Adelaide media to tell them that she did know of the friendship, and that she did not disapprove.

“No-one’s asked in a really strong way, is it appropriate for someone in his position to be having this flirty, funny friendship with a young lady? I mean if we were in school and it was a teacher, let alone the headmaster having a funny, flirty relationship with an 18-year-old student who’s of age, and they were text messaging each other constantly, it would be totally inappropriate. But the man in the highest chair in South Australia flirting with a married woman...”

Meanwhile, Mr Phillips was still trying to wrestle his own demons. He kept on writing letters, addressing them to the Premier’s Salisbury electorate office, to the Ministerial office in Victoria Square and to Parliament House.

“If I’d known his address I would do what every man would do – you go and confront the guy and it’s dealt with. It’s either dealt with verbally or physically and both parties know well enough to stay out of each other’s way going forward, don’t they?

“Whereas in my situation, for four years I’ve had to sit and every time I turn the TV on I see his face there. Every time I turn on the radio I hear that beautiful voice. Every time I go and buy a newspaper – I didn’t buy The Advertiser for four years – they’d have his pictures in there. I could not get any closure or any contact with him. That’s been the most difficult thing. You can’t have it out. That’s what is unique about my situation – with anyone else you could go and confront them.”

Then came a night in October last year, and it really was a night to remember. Mr Phillips received an invitation to a tasting at the National Wine Centre. It was an enjoyable, relaxed evening, and there is no suggestion that Mr Phillips had any more than a few tastings. He was certainly not drunk, not affected by alcohol.

“We were leaving and someone suggested I pick up a Winestate magazine as a souvenir. Some of the people were peering in the door of the function room downstairs. As I looked in I could see him there.

“I sort of just stood there and thought, ‘This is the first time I’ve seen him in four years – actually 14 days short of four years. Once he’s finished his speech he’s likely to rush out, so I’ll just wait and say something to him when he comes out.’

“I’m just standing, holding the magazine, and when you hold a magazine you generally roll it up. I didn’t turn it into a bludgeon or anything.

“Then he sat down so I thought, ‘OK, I’ll go over to the table and talk to him and just say something to him. I walked past a dozen tables with bottles of wine on them. I mean I could’ve dropped the magazine and punched him, I could’ve hit him with a bottle of wine but I didn’t. All I did was make a statement.

“I said: ‘My name’s Rick and I was married to Michelle.’

“The injury to his face was because I missed. If you’ve got the rolled-up magazine and you’re slapped on the cheek you don’t get a graze, but if you miss and you get the paper cuts from the end of the magazine it’s the scratches.

“I know it’s popular belief that I had super-human strength and that I was kicking and biting and trying to reach for a knife and all those sort of things. Our super-hero Barry Harrif, 74 years old, got me in a headlock and then he stood up afterwards and was showing everybody all the scratches from when he attacked me but the scratches he had on his arm were from when Kevin Foley got the wrong guy and attacked him.

“I dropped the magazine and thought: ‘Oh shit what have I done? Rann’s likely to have two or three bodyguards here. I’m going to get arms, legs, god knows what else broken if I do anything.

“Then our glorious Treasurer said: ‘He’s trying to kill the Premier, he’s trying to kill the Premier!’

“I got out and I was sitting on the edge of the paddy wagon and Foley came out and shouted at me again: ‘You tried to kill the Premier’. I don’t think I said ‘f*** him’ but I said ‘You’re an idiot’.

“Foley knew who I was because I’d written him a letter in August 2009 when he and Rann were having a bit of a spat. I wrote a letter saying: ‘Do you want to be South Australia’s very own Peter Costello, always the bridesmaid, never the bride? Because if you have any ambition to be the bride, here’s some letters about the Premier. If you want to do something about it – here it is.’ So I sent copies of the letters and the whole thing.”

It was over, at least that part of it. Mr Phillips was taken to the watch-house to be charged.

“They put me in a cell and I just had a light shirt on. I laid down on this concrete slab, which is cold, and I don’t think I had felt as much at peace for a long, long time. I felt that I’d finally started the procedure of closure, if you like. I almost fell asleep in this particularly uncomfortable situation.

“I’d been trying to get Rann to be accountable and answer my questions for four years, so I thought now I’ve actually got all of my questions firmly in the middle of his desk at the front of the pile.

“I was battling psychologically with every instinct that I have and everything that Michelle, my psychologist and my friends would say ... battling against my own instincts for four years. I mean it’s a real battle when you just know, but everyone else says you’re crazy and loony because you’re thinking this and you’re thinking that and for the first time within that four years I lay down and I was at peace.”

Mr Phillips finally got back to his Burnside home. It had been quite a night, and it was going to be quite a morning. When he woke up and looked outside, it seemed that every television news crew in Adelaide was encamped in his cul de sac at 7am. Three hours later, news reporters asked Mr Rann if he knew the man who attacked him.

“I’ve never met him before,” replied the Premier. Reporters persisted. “You say you’ve never met him before. Do you know what he meant by what he said to you?”

“No I don’t, ah intend, I do not intend discussing something that is now with the police, thank you,” he replied, and that was the end of the interview.

Autumn in Adelaide has sunny days and cool nights. Mr Phillips woke yesterday not knowing when next he might be home again. Would it be hours, days, weeks? Months? This was the morning of his trial, and he planned to plead guilty to the charge of assault. He is a businessman, well-regarded by his peers, impeccable character references – as tendered in court. But about the law he admits he knows little. Fortunately he had a good legal team all through the case, and yesterday David Edwardson QC was at the bar table before Magistrate Cathy Deland.

“Mr Phillips works as a self-employed importer and distributor of hardware components,” said his barrister’s submission. “He married Michelle Chantelois on 15 October 1995. They have two boys who are 11 and a half and 18 and a half. Marriage and children were everything to this man.”

Mr Edwardson continued, outlining how his client had come to suspect an affair, and how very much he wanted to believe it was “just friendship”. But the call sheets and the conversations with his wife made that very, very difficult.

“The defendant is a man of rather simple and straightforward old-fashioned values,” Mr Edwardson said.

“He assumed and expected that the other party, not just because of his position of high office but because it was the right thing to do, would have the courage and integrity to face up to him and tell him honestly that his fears were misplaced or alternatively that there had been an inappropriate relationship. All attempts to communicate with the other party received no response. This only served to exacerbate his state of anxiety and distress.

“When his attempts to communicate with the other party failed he consulted with his GP and then a psychologist in an attempt to deal with his anxiety, frustration and depression about the situation. All of these pressures and emotions came to a head on 1 October 2009 when he, by pure chance, happened to encounter the other party at the Adelaide Wine Centre.

“The prosecution does not challenge that the assault was not pre-meditated; the defendant did not approach the victim with an intention to assault him; the charged act was a spontaneous and impulsive loss of self-control following upon a history of unsuccessful attempts by him to speak personally to Mr Rann about his relationship with the defendant’s wife; and the defendant did not intend to injure or cause the victim harm.”

Mr Edwardson argued against a custodial sentence, and asked that no conviction be recorded. The prosecution was of another mind, but Her Honour had a mind of her own. She said the offence was very much at the lower end of the scale despite the public response, and that while the victim – Mr Rann – had suffered “significant embarrassment” she did not consider Mr Rann’s position to be relevant in sentencing.

She imposed a $1000, two-year good behaviour bond and ordered Mr Phillips to pay court costs of $60. No conviction was recorded.

It was over. But not quite. Reporters waited outside the Magistrates’ Court doors, cameras two deep and lenses as long. Mr Phillips emerged. He seemed almost to be blinking.

But the Premier, who has maintained his denials of a sexual relationship with Ms Chantelois, had a word or two. Naturally he was asked for his reaction. He said he “hoped the matter can now be resolved”, whatever that means. Should Mr Phillips go to jail, Mr Rann was asked. “That’s not really for me to say,” he replied, not really saying.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, and high tide appears for Mr Phillips every 10 years, virtually to the day.

“Michelle was born in 1970,” he says. “When I met her I was working in an Australian bar in Los Angeles – just casual work, and then I bought the bar in 1990. This weekend she’s 40 on the 7th of March, and our first date was the 7th of March – I met her a week before her birthday in 1990.”

And now it’s March, 2010. The couple are no longer a couple, although they very much share the parenting. Later this year Michelle intends to go to the United States for six months. He will look after the kids then, and keep building his business.

“I saw her through ‘that much’ of the doorway yesterday,” Rick said, indicating with his hands. “I mean, she’s doing it tough.”

The blogs will continue, of course, the poisonous Andrew Landeryou’s among them. Poison contaminates, adjectives like “dangerous psychopath”, and one drop can kill a whole reputation.

Eighteen-and-a-half-year-ol d Anton looks at his father. The chicken sandwich looks good.

The greatest danger, of course, is in the losing of hope, and yesterday this fractured family of four were given at least part of theirs back.