‘What about me? Do you remember what your image was like when I fell in love with you? Had I not looked any further than your popularity I would not have loved you.’ In 2005–06, François fared so badly in the polls that research institutes did not even count him.
So it was that on the night of the La Rochelle vote I was excluded from the electoral event. I did not so much as raise an eyebrow. I stayed alone in our flat on rue Cauchy. We messaged each other over the afternoon when the first trends started coming in. I could sense he was relaxing somewhat. The results were even better than the pre-tweet forecasts. My foul had not had the slightest impact on the Socialist Party’s score. Ségolène Royal was not elected, but her low score in the first round was irredeemable.
Just like in the presidential elections in 2007.
Despite the fact that the presidential majority had scored very well overall, I did not receive much support in the days that followed. The Socialist Party’s victory was expected, so my tweet was the more exciting event for the press – and they charged.
They painted Ségolène Royal as the victim of a blow below the belt rather than a candidate who had been unwisely parachuted into a constituency. In the eyes of the media and public opinion I was guilty of tripping her up. Guilty of intervening in a political debate to settle a private dispute. Guilty of not being in agreement with the President whose life I shared. Guilty of irrational jealousy. I was a woman who steals husbands, a homewrecker, spiteful and quick-tempered, hysterical. So many compliments … they were making me blush! Once again I offered to issue a public apology. Once again François’ answer was a firm no.
I tried to escape the trial by mob. I shut everything out. I isolated myself. I would receive messages saying, ‘Whatever you do, do not read this piece.’ Which was like a taunt. Either I resisted and imagined the worse, or I read the piece and invariably it knocked the breath out of me. I had to endure calls to order from all the high-level state personalities and big names in the Socialist Party. They outdid each other to find the harshest things to say about me: the Prime Minister, the favourite candidate for National Assembly Presidency, the First Secretary of the Socialist Party, and even a long-term close friend of François … I could go on.
I know the political game. I spent fifteen years working as a journalist in that field. I knew none of them would have dared attack me without François’ approval. One of my friends later phrased it in a horribly accurate way: ‘It was Hollande himself who issued the licence to kill.’
I don’t think I had ever felt so lonely. His anger at me fell after the second round of the elections – the Socialist Party had done well – but he remained very harsh. I could not understand why the political leaders were not trying to play the whole thing down and move on to something else. Every day, one of them fuelled the controversy.
TO FIGHT OFF despair I escaped as often as I could to the park of Versailles and cycled until my muscles ached. During those moments I was less than certain that I would ever set foot in the Élysée again. The thoughts in my head were dark, very dark indeed. But I had to keep it together: two of my sons were about to sit their baccalaureate exam. An exam that came around when – symbolically – there was a price on their mother’s head. And that very head was plastered on the back of all the news kiosks, crowned with titles that vied with each other to assassinate my character. What crime had I committed exactly? I was under fire for having a private life and a public life. That much was true. But I had not been the one to start it. François Hollande had only supported one candidate in the legislative elections and she happened to be the mother of his children. He had extended his support to no other candidate. He was the one who brought his personal life into the political sphere.
But my tweet had tainted the supreme symbol: the mother, the blameless one. I too am a mother, but not to the President’s children. It counted for nothing. A few months later a poll expert recommended bringing my children into public eye. He explained that French citizens never saw me with them and that a few well-placed and well-planned family pictures would be enough to turn public opinion around. Instead of seeing me as a ‘mistress’ they would see me as a mother and stepmother. He urged me to use my children to my benefit.
As for my image in the government, there were a few women in the Cabinet who did defend me. I was touched. One of them even explained that I had become a symbol in the banlieues. Young girls saw me as the woman who rejected the ‘duty to obey’. To my surprise, when I was finally ready to face going out in the street I was greeted with words of sympathy and support – many of which were from young girls or women who came from immigrant backgrounds.
I had a lunch scheduled with the Minister for Women’s Rights two or three days after the ‘scandal’. I was convinced she would cancel on account of her close relationship with Ségolène Royal. She did no such thing. I was grateful for that. Obviously we soon got to the issue of the tweet. I expressed regret. But that was not what interested her: ‘I am impressed by your media potency and I thought we could do some work together.’
I was stunned. Though I would have happily done without this ‘media potency’ – all those magazine covers that treated me like a mean and jealous witch – I thought it was brave on her part to want to be seen with me.
‘What have you got in mind?’ I asked.
‘We could go talk to the prostitutes in the Bois de Boulogne together – at night.’
Her answer took me by surprise. I knew fighting prostitution was something she felt strongly about. But on that occasion I reacted with caution: ‘I’m not sure it is a good idea under the current circumstances, I have to find issues people agree on.’
Though I turned down her offer, I remembered the expression she had used – the ‘media potency’ that so fascinated her. She was attracted by what I had been trying to avoid – and simply could not shake – since the start of my relationship with François Hollande.
I had become incapable of going to my office, I stopped going to the Élysée altogether. I carefully avoided Élysée advisers, whose hostility was tangible. Three of them, however, came to see me in secret to say they understood me and that the President had made a mistake releasing his statement of support. They even said they thought I had been his lightning rod. Had I not tweeted, the press’s thunder would have fallen onto his head for supporting his former partner in an obvious mixture of worlds that should remain separate. A few editorials said as much, but they were few and far between.
It was June 2012. The doctors suggested that sedatives might help weather the violence of the attacks directed against my person. I said no. I had never taken anti-depressants and did not want to start. No doubt I overestimated my strength. With the benefit of hindsight I think this should have been the signal that forced me to realise I needed to take a break. That I needed to take care of myself and try to understand the infernal spiral we were caught up in and figure out how to loosen the noose. But I stayed alone with my thoughts.
While I was clocking up the kilometres on my bicycle at the weekend at La Lanterne, I reflected on what had pushed me to make this 140-character mistake. To begin with, my loyalty to Olivier Falorni, the double injustice he had suffered, but above all the impossible political situation that would have resulted from Ségolène Royal being elected. Him – President Hollande – at the Élysée Palace, and her at the helm of the National Assembly. A palace each. A split family reunited by power – one of them head of the Assembly that votes in the laws; and the other one implementing them. I could not see where I fitted into that picture. As things stood, finding my place was difficult enough! I had dropped a bomb and it had exploded in my face. No one does that without a reason. Simple lack of judgement cannot explain away everything.
The image I had been dragging behind me since the beginning of our relationship was not one I recognised. I was the person who split up ‘the mythical couple in French politics’. The fact that when my relationship with François Hollande suddenly t
urned into love – nine years ago already! – I was also in a relationship was all too readily forgotten. It did not matter to anyone that I too had a family then: I had a husband I loved, Denis, and three young children.
We had all the ingredients for happiness, a lovely family life, a large house in the outskirts of Paris, a wonderful dog – who has just died, as I am writing these pages. The newspaper had agreed to let me have Wednesdays off to spend more time with my boys. I had gone from being someone who had defined herself by refusing to live the same life as my mother to wanting to be more like her.
I would make crêpes or waffles on Wednesday afternoons. We would go on walks – my children were still at the glorious age of building huts in the woods. I loved hanging around garden centres looking for new flowers to plant. I loved mowing the lawn and gardening. I eagerly awaited the spring, and lilacs, followed by the blossoming cherry trees. I loved all of that!
I resisted the attraction between François and me for as long as I could. He was the one who was insistent, he was the one who suddenly switched our platonic friendly brand of love up a gear and turned it into passionate love.
Ultimately, I am the one who paid the price for that relationship. I had to leave political journalism. And in everyone’s eyes I became the temptress, the nasty one, the homewrecker.
Starting over with a man who has a past is never easy. Millions of other women navigate the intricacies of blended families but Ségolène Royal’s presence in the political arena made things even more complicated for François and me.
I can also appreciate just how difficult it was for her. Consecutive presidential elections – in 2007 and five years later, in 2012 – saw over sixteen million French citizens twice cast their vote for the Socialist Party. Only, the first time, the ballot paper had her name on it and five years later, it bore his. An unusual, if not unique, situation. At least, until now. If Hillary Clinton runs, she will find herself in a comparable situation.
I remember discussing Hillary’s candidacy with François during a walk in the gardens of the Élysée Palace. ‘It would be grotesque for her to run for President after her husband,’ he said.
I was taken aback: ‘Have you forgotten that you ran for President after Ségolène Royal, and that you were even up against each other during the Socialist Party primaries?’ In François Hollande’s mind, the two of them are above the rules he holds others to. He lives his life in constant denial.
In the French collective consciousness – and, no doubt, in my mind as well – the two of them are the de facto couple. The mother of his children is his ‘official’ partner. I was always the other woman. And yet I have never loved anyone the way I loved him.
I have made many sacrifices for him, unreciprocated. He did refer to me on one occasion as the love of his life when speaking to the press. ‘Succeeding in your personal life and meeting the love of your life is exceptional good fortune. This sort of fortune can pass. I seized it. I have been sharing my life with Valérie Trierweiler for several years now, to my great joy.’ He later publicly expressed regret at having used the phrase ‘love of his life’ – to spare his children’s feelings, and perhaps to smooth over popular opinion. What a disappointment … What was I to him?
I felt that I had no legitimacy – something we often discussed. He did not see the problem, since we lived together and loved each other. One day, I plastered our kitchen wall with photos of my ex-husband and me from back when we were married: snaps of happy moments and holiday embraces. He was shaken. That day, he understood how difficult it was for me to live with the relentless media coverage of his former life with Ségolène Royal. He understood that I needed his support and recognition. Alas, it was short-lived. On the day of the explosive tweet, years of suffering came to a head. I was the one to trigger the detonator, and for that I take full responsibility. But it was François Hollande and Ségolène Royal, with their never-ending games – mixing private and public spheres, using family pictures and ambiguous statements – who built the ticking bomb.
One minute they were going head to head, the next they were using each other as stepping stones. In 1997, when the Plural Left won the legislative elections – called early following the dissolution of the National Assembly – François besieged the Prime Minister with appeals to appoint Ségolène Royal in the new Cabinet. Meanwhile, François took the helm of the Socialist Party. Ségolène Royal had to be kept busy so he could do as he pleased. The Prime Minister eventually submitted to his wishes.
Seventeen years later, Ségolène Royal reappeared in the current government because François Hollande had willed it so. The political play between them is endless; it is a maze I got lost in.
In March 2014, two months after our separation, I went to vote in the municipal elections. Near Isle-Adam, 40 km outside of Paris, where I used to live with my family – the family I had built before I met François. My heart sank as I parked my car in front of our old house, which my ex-husband still lives in.
I walked past my children’s primary school. A small, old-fashioned school with only seventy pupils, split into three classes. The school sits on the village square, opposite a twelfth-century church. All three of my children attended it. Memories came flooding back, overwhelming me. I remembered my three beautiful boys, in the morning, at panic time. We lived so close to the school that we could hear the bell ring. That was the signal to start the hunt for a pair of shoes, a coat or a school book. And demand a goodbye kiss. Afterwards, I would go for a walk in the countryside with my ex-husband and our dog.
I was overcome by a wave of nostalgia. My children were nearly grown men. Our polling station was in ‘The Dreaming House’, their old canteen. When I walked out that day, I cared little about the Socialist Party’s results – what mattered to me was what I had done with my life. I had just voted Socialist, but I was thinking about my family – the brilliant man I had married and my wonderful boys, whom I had left for François seven years earlier. Nobody believed in him then, and I was far from nursing secret dreams of the Élysée. We had never discussed the possibility of him running for President one day. There was nothing but love.
All those sacrifices only to be thrown out like a used handkerchief – in the blink of an eye, and in eighteen words. Did I make the right choice? Crippled with doubt, I decided to go for a walk in the countryside to think things over, the way I used to do. Heavy hail forced me to turn back hastily. To turn back – at that moment I longed to turn back time, for those years never to have happened…
But how could I forget those first few years of passion with François? That once-in-a-lifetime passion that devours everything. How could I not reminisce about the time ‘Before Us’, as we used to say? All those years when I covered the Socialist Party as a political journalist. First, in a publication called Profession Politique5 – where I started out, along with a dozen other young journalists.
I had never dreamt of being a journalist: it seemed completely inaccessible. Which is why I felt like I had found my own Holy Grail when the opportunity arose – thanks to an extraordinary series of fortunate events – twenty-six years ago.
The year of my Masters of Advanced Studies in Political and Social Sciences and Communication at the Sorbonne, I was among guests at a party held for the 1988 presidential election. Shuffling between different groups of people, I was dragged along to the Maison de l’Amérique Latine, where François Mitterrand was celebrating his victory. When he saw me at the venue, he greeted me and said: ‘I believe we have met.’
No, of course not. I did not know the President! I was twenty-three years old, a small-town girl who had landed in Paris five years earlier to study and follow her first love. I did not know anyone ‘important’ – least of all the President…
But that short exchange caught the attention of an investor in the publication Profession Politique, which was due to launch three months later. ‘Go and see them,’ he said, ‘they are looking for young people.’
It was M
ay, and I was about to finish my studies the following month. I had a few job leads in public relations, which I was chasing half-heartedly. I was struggling with the notion that my studies were coming to an end – I enjoyed student life. Still, I contacted the head of Profession Politique, with no belief in my chances of being recruited.
I was convinced I did not have the right profile. I was not a female Rasputin. Like many others, I was full of self-doubt, having been stalled by that infamous glass ceiling. But this time, I felt carried by new-found strength. I went for one interview, then a second. And – nothing short of a miracle – I was offered the position. I was due to start work at Profession Politique on 1 August.
There was one problem. Like every year for the past five years, I had committed to working all summer at Byblos, a shop selling ethnic jewellery in Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, a seaside resort in Vendée – the region where I spent all of my childhood holidays with my parents and my brothers and sisters. First, in a small rental house back when we went on holiday in June because prices were affordable – which also meant that we missed a month of school. Then, when we got a little older, camping became the family’s seasonal migration. My parents had finally been able to buy a second-hand caravan but we lacked basic amenities, since we did not stay at a camping site but in a field which a farmer rented out to two or three families.
To pay for my studies, I complemented the state grants I received with other odd jobs and summer seasonal work in the shop. From the age of eighteen, I had single-handedly supported myself. My parents had let me leave home on the condition that I managed on my own. They could not afford to do otherwise. They were not in a position to help me financially and it would not have occurred to me to ask them for anything. I still remember my mother crying when I ‘moved to the capital’…
Thank You for This Moment Page 6