Thank You for This Moment

by Valérie Trierweiler

  I eventually came out of my makeshift refuge. I quickly reapplied my make-up and off we went. François did not talk to me in the car. He was like a man possessed by his speech – in a state of extreme concentration, as he always was before any major event. I respected those moments of silence. He retreated within himself. I knew better than to disturb him.

  It was impossible to access the Cathedral Square, it was jam-packed. So many people had come! We continued on foot, pushing through the crowd. I was behind him, jostled this way and that. I kept being hit by cameras. The crowd went crazy when François walked up on stage. I stopped just beneath the stage. I had never followed him up on a platform, it had never felt like it was my place. After saying a few words he asked me to join him on stage. I was so unused to it that I did not move an inch, I was rooted to the spot. Arms pushed me towards the steps. François held his hand out to me. It was all completely new and I was touched by his gesture.

  As Tulle is known for its accordion festival, the mayor had naturally planned accordion tunes. I had happened to mention one day that I loved ‘La vie en rose’ so the mayor surprised me with it. The crowd joined in and sang along while François led me into a couple of dance steps. I was both embarrassed and filled with joy. For me, that was an intense moment. It is still one of my favourite memories. I heard that ‘real’ Parisians – snobs – mocked the accordion atmosphere but the people of Corrèze were disappointed that the party did not last longer.

  The picture of us dancing hangs in the President’s Élysée office. There it remains, even after our separation. My own copy of the picture is still in my Élysée boxes – and those are still in my hall – but the image is imprinted on my memory.

  I could hardly have imagined that the following week the daily L’Express would run the title ‘Is Valérie Trierweiler trying too hard?’ The editor-in-chief even claimed that I had requested ‘La vie en rose’ in Tulle on that victory day, and laboured his – outraged – point by labelling it a political act!

  In spite of everything, that Tulle memory is one of my most treasured moments. I barely had time to tweet what I felt: ‘So proud to be by the French President’s side today and as happy as ever to be sharing François’ life’. François was expected at the Place de la Bastille. The time had come to leave Tulle and head to Paris. He shook as many hands as he could before we were rushed to the Brive airport. How I would have loved to stay on the Cathedral Square, amid the quietly joyous crowd. The people of Tulle had been the first to pave his path to victory by welcoming him in their town thirty years earlier. It was real recognition – for him and for them.

  We went back to the car and drove quickly to where the private plane awaited. It all looked like real life but it was interspersed with completely surreal elements. Messages started to come in from around the world. The man I had loved for so many years, the man no one believed in, had become Head of State. Angela Merkel, Barack Obama and many more proffered their congratulations. It was non-stop. Except when the signal eventually dropped – so it goes in Corrèze.

  How long before the man by my side changed?

  We joined the small team aboard the plane. A fortnight earlier, after the results of the first round came in, the whole team was able to relax a bit. Everyone was betting on the results of the second round. We all felt light and laid-back. Except François. The collective high spirits had spread to everyone but him. He had isolated himself but I do not think it was because he was afraid of losing. He was in the lead.

  Having shared many other pre-vote anxieties, I knew full well that he would never take anything for granted until the final result came in. His anxiety when he waited for vote results was always all-encompassing and communicative. In any case, he contaminated me and I would become worse than him.

  Not this time, though: we were confident. I wondered what he was thinking about at that moment. No doubt he was preparing his address to the crowd, but something else had taken over him, I could feel it. It was as if the weight of history had suddenly landed on his shoulders.

  His reaction to victory on that second-round evening was altogether different to anything I had seen him go through previously. François took a flute of champagne but did not drink it.

  Meanwhile, we rewrote history. Campaign anecdotes resurfaced. The flight flew by. Time was suspended. When we landed, a crowd had gathered around the airport to see the new President. He went to shake their hands – everything else would have to wait.

  The crowd at the airport in Paris was much denser than in Brive. The most impressive of all was the number of press motorcycles – too many to count. There could have been thirty or forty, who knows? They started chasing after our car that was headed to La Bastille. They looked like a swarm of bees. I feared for the safety of some motorcyclists who were prepared to take insane risks to capture an image of our car on the motorway or on the ring road.

  I recalled footage of Jacques Chirac when he was elected. He pulled down the window of his car to wave, with his wife Bernadette by his side. It was as if I had suddenly realised what was happening. I was overcome by a rush of emotion and took François’ hand. But calls and text messages were still coming in constantly and I did not manage to hold his hand for long … Our fingers separated… Until that moment, during all those years we had been together, as soon as we were next to one another we were incapable of keeping our hands off each other – we were like two magnets, always touching. This incredible event had disturbed our intimacy. From that moment, our tête-à-têtes started to become increasingly rare.

  It was gone midnight when we reached La Bastille and it was then that I understood just how much things had changed. It was not a crowd but an ocean of human beings eagerly pressing against one another to get closer to François. Tens of thousands of people had turned out for him. We passed the VIP tent first, which was filled with all sorts of celebrities. Those who had been there from the outset and those who had ‘just joined’. I did not know that Julie Gayet was already hanging around – like a snake in the grass. I did not see her coming. I had not bumped into her a single time during the campaign.

  The first person I saw was my mother, who would not have missed this for the world. She was the person I went to embrace.

  Just as so many other mothers fear for their children’s wellbeing, she had sensed the potential danger of this particular situation. I read a mixture of pride and concern in her eyes. It was her very own daughter who was the President’s partner: to say it had been unimaginable would be a major understatement. My northern banlieue of Angers was a distant memory, too distant…

  FRANÇOIS WAS IN demand left, right and centre; the mêlée had reached mad levels. I eventually spotted my children, hiding in a corner to avoid pictures. I wondered what they were thinking. They certainly suspected that their lives too would be turned upside down but they could never have imagined that they would be treated as prey over the next twenty months – even after I left the Élysée, in fact. They could hardly have guessed that, instead of the privileges everyone imagines, people would constantly try to trap them and that fake stories would be made up to undermine me.

  I spent a brief moment with them. No doubt, in their eyes, their mother was being monopolised by other people – my own sentiment in relation to François, as it happened.

  The crowd was waiting to see François and hear his speech. He walked up on stage, as did I – everyone did. He delivered his speech in a hoarse voice: ‘Thank you, French citizens, for making me President. I know what many of you feel: years of hurt, years of being scorned. We will have to repair, to recover, to reunite.’ He spoke for twenty minutes. ‘We are living a great moment, a victory that will make us happy.’

  At the time I hardly registered what he was saying. The atmosphere was intoxicating. The crowd swayed and hooted with joy, it was all collective exhilaration and jubilation.

  Suddenly, I saw that François was walking across the stage to the other end – even though I was by his side. I t
urned my head to observe what was going on. He walked all the way down the platform to kiss Ségolène Royal. I lost my composure, oblivious to the cameras zooming in on me, magnifying my crestfallen face on the giant screens. Was I the one who was ungenerous? Was I the insecure one – unsure of him? Did I still desperately crave legitimacy?

  When he returned centre stage I whispered in his ear that I wanted him to kiss me, adding ‘on the mouth’. Yes, I will admit I did want the difference to be clear. There had been a woman before, with whom he had four children, and there was another one now, with whom he lived. Not two women at the same time. I had had it with the infamous ‘Hollande and his two women’. I felt reduced to nothing.

  Not for a second did I imagine that the press would read those words on my lips – and publish them, presenting them as incriminating evidence in my trial as a ‘dominating woman’. I experienced that as a violation. Not a scrap of intimacy was possible any longer. Everything would now be stolen – even a whisper in someone’s ear…

  I should have understood that this new world was not made for me. I am a spontaneous person, I have always been forthright, I say what I think – I am from a working-class background that hides nothing. The political elite is rather used to things being underhand; things are unspoken – you greet those you despise with a wide smile and malign them behind their back. I was ill-prepared for this life, and for that I paid the price.

  I was head over heels in love with a man who no longer wanted to invest as much in our relationship as he had done until then. Success was driving the man I was madly in love with away from me. My world had been turned on its head.

  The man who had wanted me so much for so many long years had become the French President and, simultaneously, a different person. It was inevitable. François compartmentalised everything, I sensed that he did not want me to be a part of his political career anymore and was suddenly keeping me at arm’s length. I thought I could withstand just about anything from him, but his indifference was more than I could bear. All women need the men they love to see them. I am just like any other woman.

  It was in that context that I found myself being ‘parachuted’ into the role of First Lady – an ill-defined role without an official status – when I had wanted to continue to lead my own life, independently. I would need to adapt to that stranglehold but I had not yet understood that. I was not sure how we would strike our new balance, or whether we would even manage it.

  When I worked as a political journalist François and I would spend hours upon hours discussing our common passion. For years we shared everything. Politics is a central part of my life too. In fact, politics brought us together, well before we fell in love.

  Once we got to the Élysée, I had to wrench myself away from that part of him and it was heart-rending. I made sure not to encroach upon what was political. Figuratively and literally, I did not step outside the boundaries that had been drawn for me. I never put a foot through the door to power. I did not even know where the advisers’ offices were. I called the door separating ‘the Madame wing’ from the rest of the Palace the ‘Berlin Wall’. Within those walls, you don’t say the ‘Élysée’ but the ‘Palace’. Personally, I never could call it that. I only ever attended one meeting with advisers on the other side: we were preparing for International Women’s Day. Everyone said my ideas for 8 March were excellent. Not a single one was implemented.

  It was during the campaign that uneasiness crept in. I struggled to find my place in François’ campaign from the very start. I began to put on weight, my neck was tense and would often freeze up. My whole face was tense, and covered in eczema. The stress was palpable, I felt like I had aged considerably in just a few months. A campaign can be an unimaginable shock, it is difficult to imagine what it is like to be constantly assaulted by cameras when you are not prepared for it.

  Why was I having such trouble adapting to all this? I blamed myself for not being stronger. Now I understand why I wasn’t. Ever since he had begun campaigning, François put me in a constant state of insecurity with his lies; he was secretive and cagey. He was unable to give me a clear picture of just how much distance he wanted to instil between us on certain topics. Instead, he did it his way – don’t ask, don’t tell – he lied by omission, lied full stop and avoided certain topics. If I had a penny for every time I heard something from his ‘gang’ that he should really have told me himself…

  Sometimes I would disappear, to get back on my feet and rebuild my self-confidence.

  We were a couple but we were hardly facing a normal situation: we were en route to the Presidency. I thought we had a solid bond, I thought we were inseparable – as we had been during all the years leading up to this, when he was in the political wilderness. But since his career had taken off, our closeness was slowly eroding. He had other horizons on his mind. He barely saw me anymore. In contrast, he was the only person who mattered to me. His victory wasn’t what counted. To me, there was only him, the love of my life.

  Back to the election victory celebrations… The Minister of the Interior was worried things might get out of hand as the crowd around Place de la Bastille was already getting a bit rowdy, so our departure was moved forward. We went back to our home on rue Cauchy. On the return journey, cars honked all the way. François had his window down and waved. We were still being chased by a horde of press motorcycles. It was utter madness at the foot of our building. Several dozens of journalists and photographers crowded the street; TV crews were filming live. Life as we knew it, our life, was about to change drastically. It was as if I was a spectator, not a protagonist, in my own life. Looking from the outside in.

  François’ crazy race did not let up. The next day he ran from meeting to meeting to prepare his Cabinet. He shared with me the name of the future Prime Minister as well as a few ministers. But thanks to my experience as a political journalist I knew that lists continually change until the very last minute. All I did was suggest a name, which in the event did not sit well with François. I had thought the editor-in-chief of Elle magazine would be a good fit for the ministry of Women’s Rights. François’ reply was: ‘I can’t do that to Giesbert.’ Franz-Olivier Giesbert, the then director of the weekly magazine Le Point, was the life partner of Elle’s editor-in-chief. François had first-hand experience of his partner being promoted instead of him, and in his mind, Franz-Olivier Giesbert could only have seen his partner’s nomination as a personal snub. Macho solidarity at its basest.

  I did criticise a few names he was toying with but it certainly had no influence on who he chose. As a matter of fact, I did not know half of the potential ministers. They had emerged from the depths of the Socialist Party, the Radicals and the Greens. Their nomination resulted from pre-electoral agreements, a bit of pot luck too. Worse, some of the women were even chosen from a catalogue.

  Unsurprisingly, the press wrote – with that air of authority it always assumes – that we had drafted the list together. It was of course utter nonsense – François is not easily influenced.

  Once we got home to rue Cauchy, François continued to call various people. I warned him several times that when he was on the balcony I could hear his conversations through the window in our room. The neighbours could listen in too if they pricked up their ears.

  Security services came to do a thorough search of the flat, check that bugs had not been planted and that the new President was not in any danger. The bay window was a security risk. Several flats overlooked the inside of our flat and security recommended having bullet-proof windows fitted.

  It would have cost tens of thousands of euros and François refused to do it because it did not fit in with his ‘President Normal’ agenda. Besides, there was hardly any point as the President spent time a lot of time on the balcony – we had lunch or dinner on it whenever the weather allowed. In the end, our security protocol was fairly basic: two emergency alarms were fitted, one in the entrance and one in our room – directly linked to the President’s security of
ficers, with a password to alert them to a very serious danger, in case we had a gun to our heads. Every single contingency was catered for, including the very worst.

  François wanted to lighten the whole security apparatus. He got rid of the CRS12 van stationed in front of the building and of the police officer who stood guard 24/7 on our floor. He also put an end to routine ID checks on anyone entering the building.

  When we were in our flat on rue Cauchy we could have been mistaken for a normal couple, if it weren’t for the crowd of waiting journalists every morning on the sidewalk, questions at the ready. They were spot on: he never shot them down, every morning before he left he took the time to answer.

  After the madness of the last month of campaigning, I was glad to spend some time with my son, who was studying for his baccalaureate. He had to take his sports exam a few days after the election. On the morning of the exam he looked out the window, saw the cameras and had a panic attack. He was simply unable to leave the flat. I begged him to go to his exam but he was rooted to the spot.

  I tweeted, asking the journalists and photographers to respect our privacy, to leave us alone. My request was interpreted as an affront: how could I, a journalist, reject my own colleagues? I could hardly tell them that my son hadn’t slept a wink and was in no state to go to a baccalaureate exam because of them!

  I managed to reassure him and convince him to go. But when the examiner saw him arrive in such low spirits he sent him home and gave him a new exam date.