I asked to see François before I left but one of the doctors was against it. I mustered the strength to say that I would not leave without seeing him… Someone went to get him. Seeing him gave me another shock. My legs failed me and I fell to the ground. Seeing him reminded me of his betrayal. It hurt me even more than the day before. Things were starting to speed up around me. It was immediately decided that I would be taken away. I could not stand up. Two security guards stood on either side of me and hoisted me up under the arms and held me up as best they could. The stairs seemed never-ending. Brigitte followed with my bag – a lovely bag given to me for my birthday by the team that worked with me at the Élysée, to use on official trips. But the pomp and ceremony of receptions was a long way away. The First Lady – unable to stand up or walk straight – looked like a rag doll that had been pulled apart. Brigitte rode with me in the car. I did not say a word during the entire trip. I simply could not talk.
I was admitted as soon as I arrived, and in no time I was settled into a hospital bed. What nightmare scenario had led me to this? A drip in my arm. A nightgown courtesy of the welfare services. Sedated into deep sleep. For how long? A day? Two days? I hardly knew, I had lost all concept of time. My first instinct when I woke up was to reach for both of my mobile phones. They were nowhere to be found. The doctor explained that they had been confiscated to ‘protect’ me from the ‘outside world’. I demanded them back, threatening to leave. The doctors agreed to hand them back to me when they saw how determined I was.
The security guard who had been with me since the President’s election took up headquarters in my room, wearing white scrubs. To keep a low profile, he sat in a chair near the door, dressed up as a nurse. He was the one who watched over the visits – as well as ensuring that only authorised visitors came through. Visits were rare. Everything was being controlled – but not by me, and I was not aware of it yet. A personal affair was being treated like a state affair. I was now no more than a file.
I confirmed to a journalist that I was in hospital. I had the feeling that something was going on at the Élysée. My intuition was vindicated. As soon as the news spread, ‘they’ wanted to get me out. The First Lady in hospital was not good for the President’s image. Not much in the whole sorry affair was good for his image. Least of all the picture of him on the rue du Cirque with his motorbike helmet on his head. This time I stood my ground and told the doctor I wanted to stay a couple more days. Where would I have gone? Back to the rue Cauchy, to my flat – our flat? I was so drugged that I could not stand up; my blood pressure had dropped to 60. One day it dropped so low that the nurses were unable to take it.
The doctors were talking about sending me to a clinic to rest. My memories are vague. I remember the nurses coming to take my blood pressure very regularly, even waking me up during the night. I do not remember all of the visits, but I remember of course that my sons visited every day and brought me flowers and chocolates – as did my mother, who had rushed to my bedside from her small home town. I remember that François Bachy, my best friend, came every day too. Brigitte, meanwhile, was the link with the Élysée. She later told me that she had been astounded by the inhumanity she had encountered. Like talking to a brick wall, she said.
On day five, François had yet to visit, although he sent me fairly laconic daily messages. I learned that the doctors had forbidden him from coming to see me. I did not understand this decision, which, on top of being hurtful for me, was disastrous politically speaking. After a heated discussion, one of the doctors gave in and lifted the ban. He allowed a ten-minute visit. It lasted over an hour.
Again, my recollections are vague. The discussion was calm. It could not have gone any other way given the astronomic dose of tranquilisers I was being fed. The head of the ward visited every ten minutes to make sure it was going well, then left again. He later told one of his friends it had felt like witnessing two lovers reuniting.
All I can recall is telling François I would go to his New Year Wishes event in Tulle – planned for that week. François was the elected representative of that little town and I had not missed a single one of his speeches there in years. Well before he became President, I went with him to hear his speech. It was our ritual – one the citizens of Tulle had come to expect, too. Just like our own election-day ritual. I have lost count of the number of times I canvassed the polling stations alongside him, all those times where we would end up in the cellar of La Guenne town hall drinking Roger’s excellent wine and devouring his crêpes filled with rillettes.
Unsurprisingly, the answer was no. At first François tried to dissuade me with talk of my condition and eventually settled the matter by saying it was impossible on a political level. In short, he did not want me there. Even though I myself was prepared to face the stares from curious bystanders and ill-wishers alike.
Three months after I came out of hospital, I woke up in tears. Being apart from him on 24 March – the first day of the first round of the 2014 municipal elections – was very painful. Election dates brought back memories of utterly unique moments: it gave me such joy to experience the thrills of each election with him, as well as the annual Socialist Party summer conference in La Rochelle.
We were together for all of the major dates on the political calendar for over twenty years. I was there with him first as a journalist and then as his partner. We shared all the defining moments of his public life. They were intense moments. And with each year that passed the two of us were increasingly close – until the day everything changed, until the day we got together as a couple.
It was all over now. He no longer wanted me there. I was adamant: ‘I will go. I’ll drive there in my own car.’ I have lost count of the number of times I drove down alone – by day or by night. I would not bat an eyelid at the thought of a five-hour drive for a stolen moment of intimacy – before driving all the way back up the A19 motorway. True passion is uniquely intoxicating.
The next day, in a state of extreme exhaustion, I was completely out of it. The day after that – for the President’s New Year Wishes in Tulle – I took a turn for the worse. I could simply not get up. I tried to get out of bed but immediately collapsed. The Labour Minister’s wife, Valérie, came to have lunch with me. She had a sandwich while I had the usual hospital tray. I could hardly hold my fork, let alone keep a conversation going. I struggled to stay awake and make the most of her visit. But it was a losing battle. I stopped fighting it. She let me rest.
My blood pressure had reached new lows. It was only later that I found out why: I was being heavily sedated to stop me from going to Tulle. My veins could not cope with the overdose.
The doctor was worried about me getting behind the wheel. He kept saying: ‘You won’t even make it to the end of the corridor!’ I argued with him several times. Each time, espresso was the bargaining tool. He was the only one who made good coffee and allowed me to drink my daily dose – provided I made a few concessions.
True, he was a bit of an ogre, but I was rather fond of him. I appreciated his frankness and sensed that the whole affair made him slightly uneasy. He later told me he had been to the Élysée to keep the President informed of my condition. I do not know how much they discussed and whether that is when they decided on the ‘anti-Tulle’ operation.
I felt listless, the time passed without my noticing. The supportive nurses tried to shake me out of my misery. Everything was difficult: getting up, taking a shower, brushing my hair. They nudged me: ‘Don’t let yourself go!’ They had always seen me as a First Lady who took care of her appearance; now they were faced with a wreck who would not even bother changing her pyjamas. They let me know they were behind me – beyond their professional obligations.
My release date came around. I was to continue my convalescence at La Lanterne – formerly a residence for the Prime Minister, it was made available to the President in 2007. It is a peaceful place, adjacent to the Park of Versailles.
Every minute detail of the exit operation h
ad been planned to avoid the paparazzi. It was like a covert ops evacuation. I struggled to put one foot in front of the other. I held onto a security guard’s arm, swaying slightly. Obviously we avoided the front door. The security routine was stepped up. The car we normally used was turned into a decoy and sent out first on a scouting mission.
The trick worked. Television crews and photographers were stationed in front of La Lanterne but they only caught the fleeting image of a car with stained glass windows pulling into the driveway, nothing more. They did not even glimpse my shadow. The word is apt: I was a mere shadow of my former self.
Being back in a place I loved felt good – it was there that I had my fondest memories of moments shared with the President. A peaceful harbour of a house with its high windows that bathed the rooms in light. A property protected by tall trees that have been there for centuries. I was welcomed by the caretakers who have been managing the property for twenty-five years – guardian angels, really. The couple had seen many a prime minister – before Nicolas Sarkozy snatched back this little slice of paradise for the presidency. They have witnessed many a secret meeting, many a family celebration and have no doubt seen their fair share of drama. But they keep it to themselves. They have never betrayed anyone, never spilled the slightest detail. I used to enjoy having coffee with them in the morning, we would talk about this and that. We always shared pleasant moments. They saw how lonely I was.
One of the young Élysée doctors was posted in the next-door room 24/7, monitoring my blood pressure and feeding me a treatment of anti-anxiety meds and sedatives. I felt light-headed as soon as I tried to get up and had to sit back down immediately. One morning I only just managed to catch myself before falling. I was very cautious after that.
Every day a friend came to visit. As did my family. They did not tell me everything that was going on in the outside world. They protected me from the mob, the insane speculation and the scandal-mongering newspaper and magazine covers. One day, my mother, my son and I were walking around the garden to make the most of a bit of sunshine – far from suspecting that some paparazzi had gone to the lengths of hiding in the trees. They could only photograph us from behind, which did not stop a gossip magazine from purchasing one of the pictures. The media machine was at full throttle. It gobbled up every unimportant piece of my life.
The previous summer I had often gone alone to La Lanterne while François was working in Paris. I felt sheltered there, and got into the habit of going on long bicycle rides. My security guards and I felt like we were not far off from going pro. Every day we would cycle 37 km through the park and the forest of Versailles. We timed ourselves, hoping to improve, to shave off a few minutes and increase our kilometre/hour ratio. Nothing could stop us, not even a rainy day. It was a pleasure I did not tire of.
François joined me mid-August. He had finally allowed himself a few days off – sort of. He barely looked up from his files and refused to leave the grounds of La Lanterne. Going for a stroll meant no more than a couple of walks around the garden. That did not stop me from going on my bicycle rides. The paparazzi were everywhere. All around the park. In fact, a picture of me on my bike had been published in Le Parisien a few days earlier.
One morning, as we were nearing a sharp bend around the park’s cross-shaped Grand Canal, I spotted two photographers and headed towards them without warning the two policemen who were escorting me. The paparazzi had made a day of it: they had thought of everything, down to a blanket and a cool box. One of the paparazzi got scared and lifted his hands in the air as if I had been holding a gun: ‘We didn’t take the photo in Le Parisien, we swear! It wasn’t us! Really it wasn’t.’
I was amused by how terrified they looked.
‘That’s not why I’m here, I came to tell you that you are wasting your time. The President will not come out, you won’t get any pictures of him. You can photograph me on my bike every day but what’s the point? You won’t get him. You’d be better off spending time with your families.’
Predictably, they did not believe me and, just as predictably, they wasted their time ‘shooting’ me every morning – hands on the handlebar, no hands… Still, remembering that photographer’s panic always makes me smile, just as I smile at the memory of my security guard’s playful comment: ‘Well, you definitely don’t need us!’
Last January those oddly happy memories suddenly seemed very distant. I tried to do a bit of indoor cycling, but had to give up straight away – I did not have the strength for it. I stayed in bed. The days passed aimlessly, flicking through old magazines – I avoided current news like the plague – listening to music and sleeping. Every day I received dozens of anonymous letters – they were addressed to the Élysée, which couriered them over. Some letters moved me to tears. Many women – but not just women – wanted to express their support. I put a few letters to one side, promising myself I would write back and I did manage a few thank you letters.
A week went by that way. I had lost all concept of time. Time was suspended, medicated, anaesthetised. While the worldwide media machine printed pictures of me, discussed my life, my fate, I avoided reading magazines at all costs. I only read the countless emails and text messages that had come in while I was in hospital. From friends I had not seen in a long time, from distant family, work relations, writers, people who had found my number even though I did not know them. I also received messages from women I had helped through their bereavement or their troubles – women who, in turn, wanted to comfort me. I was particularly touched by a message from Eva Sandler, who had lost her husband and her two little boys in the Toulouse school shooting. I had no right to complain – I was going through an ordeal, not a tragedy.
From the Élysée, I only received three messages sent by advisers. The rest of them had gone into hiding. I was already being treated like a pariah. Within the government, only four ministers dared send me a kind word.
Those I knew best went AWOL. Their deafening silence was highlighted by the messages from the ‘other side’ – from Claude Chirac, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Cécilia Attias,1 Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Alain Delon and many more. In politics, it is best not to be on the losing side.
In under a week, not only did my life explode but I was given evidence of the extent of cynicism in the small world of politics – friends, advisers and courtesans.
François announced that he would visit the following Saturday ‘to talk’. Shortly before dinnertime, he said. When he arrived we went through to the big living room, the one we call the music room, where an imposing grand piano sits. It is not the original instrument but it is in that room that André Malraux’s wife sat down to play when Charles de Gaulle’s Minister for Culture lived there. The General had been greatly saddened by Malraux’s tragedy – the death of both of his children in an accident. De Gaulle had granted André Malraux the privilege of isolating himself there with his wife and her son. Every weekend, as if in a bid to numb himself, Malraux tackled the interior decoration of La Lanterne. Namely, he turned the old stables into his library.
François and I sat opposite one another, on different sofas. The atmosphere was heavy, the distance between us was already palpable. It was then that he mentioned separating. I could not understand his logic. He was the one caught red-handed and I was the one to pay the price. But so it went. His decision did not seem irrevocable, not yet, but I did not have the strength to argue. He tried not to be too heartless but he had delivered a harsh sentence. It did not really register; it was as if I was under anaesthetic.
We moved to the dining room for dinner. With the butlers there, the conversation turned to banal matters. We went to bed – in separate bedrooms. We had never done that. He wanted to mark the end. I had a fitful night, peopled with nightmares and hallucinations caused by the medication.
I woke with a start, convinced there was someone in the room. I thought of François wrapping another woman in his arms. Who made the first move? What did he tell her about us? What was he looking for in her
that I could not give him? Imagining it was painful. I tried to push the images to the back of my mind but they kept surfacing, again and again. I was drowning in those images, choked up with tears.
In the morning, François told me he would leave after lunch and that two of my very close friends, Constance and Valérie, wanted to come and see me. Why weren’t they calling me themselves? I wanted to be alone, to find myself and understand what was happening.
François was insistent. He did not feel comfortable leaving me alone with my despair when he was about to go and meet his mistress. I did not know that my two friends had arrived in Versailles that morning. He had cooked up this strategy to ease his conscience – he was not leaving me by myself. They were waiting in a café for his green light to come to La Lanterne. He wanted to pass the baton on to them. They bombarded me with messages begging me to let them come over. I gave in and that was all to the good. Their presence was comforting after François had left.
The two of us had planned to see each other again the following Thursday. Thursday had always been our day. The day we started our relationship. The day we met every week between 2005 and 2007. The day Joe Dassin famously sang about. We listened to that song countless times in my car, on repeat. We would sing along: ‘Remember? It was a Thursday / A big day / A big step towards true love.’
I decided we would meet in our home, in the rue Cauchy. We would be alone there and could speak freely. He arrived on time, which was unusual for him. He had brought lunch prepared by the Élysée in a big white metal lunchbox, with ready-made platters that just needed to be microwaved.
Thank You for This Moment Page 2