Thank You for This Moment

by Valérie Trierweiler

  On the one hand we were going through a nightmare in public; on the other we were living a private dream. The idea of being together after the election was what kept us going. Deep down, I was convinced that if she was elected he would not leave her. Despite his promises, I did not believe him.

  We managed to spend a night together in the midst of all this and the next morning we switched the radio on to listen to the news in bed. The first round of the presidential election was only a month away and the topic was Ségolène Royal’s upcoming campaign book. In it she wrote, ‘Yes, we are together: yes, François and I still live together’ and went on to outline her plans of marrying him on a canoe in Tahiti. François was furious, he felt trapped.

  For all that, on the evening of the first round when it became apparent that Nicolas Sarkozy had secured victory, François was despondent. The rest is history. A few weeks after Ségolène Royal’s defeat, in a piece on Royal’s campaign entitled ‘The femme fatale’, two Le Monde journalists revealed that Hollande was in a relationship with an unnamed woman, and sparked off an explosion.

  Ségolène Royal wasted no time announcing in turn that she had ‘asked François Hollande to leave the family home’. The AFP rushed to make her sentence an ‘urgent’ news report, even though the former couple had agreed on a joint statement.

  All is fair in love and war and I now fully appreciate how betrayal can lead to so much resentment. I can easily imagine that during that period François behaved with Ségolène Royal as he did with me during his affair with Julie Gayet – which is to say that he was the king of doublespeak, ambiguity and perpetual lies.

  At the time, we lived in a small furnished flat that I loved but François did not want to stay there. He wanted us to move in together properly. We chose the flat I am still in, on rue Cauchy, and spent time furnishing it to our liking.

  I caught wind of a rumour about him regretting his separation and wanting to get back with Ségolène Royal. She certainly suggested as much. Meanwhile, he was more committed than ever, and was very insistent about wanting me to bear his child.

  Anything is possible, including that Ségolène Royal was telling the truth … I now know how duplicitous François Hollande can be.

  François missed his children. He had not seen them in months and they collectively refused to see him as long as he stayed with me. I did not want to be responsible for this estrangement.

  Nothing is more important in my eyes than children. I have shared custody of my three boys and I miss them half of the week.

  So I told François that I was willing to try for a baby with him, but only once he had rekindled his relationship with his children. François did reconcile with his children but nature did not give us the child he had been dreaming of since we met. It is probably for the best.

  Not long ago, I read a book about François Hollande in which he told the author that he had never wanted a child with me. I was mortified. He then justified himself to me by saying: ‘I wasn’t about to share our intimacy.’

  One more lie, and possibly the most hurtful he could ever have uttered.

  June 2014

  I can’t switch the radio on without hearing about the commemoration of the Allied landings in Normandy on 6 June. When I was at the Élysée, my team and I discussed a First Lady D-Day tribute. We had planned to visit a factory which had continued to operate during the war thanks to women – while their husbands, brothers and sons were fighting in the war.

  Now, hearing about the D-Day commemorations is like reliving the whole January nightmare all over again. I feel myself sinking into a bottomless sadness – the sort you don’t easily snap out of. The past keeps engulfing me, stifling me like an adder curling itself around my neck.

  Every afternoon I end up back in my bed, unable to read or write. I cannot do anything. Anything at all. I simply cannot let go and move forward.

  When I do go out, no one notices a thing. People even say I am ‘radiant’. But I am unable to project myself professionally, my plans are very vague.

  Today, Friday, I cannot see how to get through the day – short of staying in bed with a couple of sleeping pills for company. As they often have, my friends are the ones who end up saving me from this dark day that reminds me so much of the past.

  As if to rub salt into my wounds, François continues to harass me with text messages. The day before yesterday he swore he thought only of me. Yesterday, he begged me to see him again. This morning, he said he wanted me back, no matter what price he would have to pay. Sometimes he sends me a dozen texts a day. Short and haunting sentences about missing me, about making amends, about how much he needs us to resume our former life. He seems tired of losing everything, both in his personal and his public life.

  When he does not have a reception or an official dinner, he asks me to have dinner with him. He tries to keep track of my evenings out and my trips. In New York or in Marrakech, I find flowers waiting for me in my hotel room – even though I never tell him where I am staying. He has stepped up symbolic gestures and impassioned declarations of love.

  But he continues to lie to me, to make promises he does not keep. Getting back together is a doomed prospect because I know he will not change. While he is begging me to come back, he is also turning the ‘Madame wing’ into an office for his advisers – whose numbers are forever growing. As I write, there is no one in my former office. It is only a matter of time.

  He swears he is prepared to issue a public apology. I do not believe him. I no longer believe any of his promises. Every single one of his lies has eaten away at the boundless love we bore one another.

  Early June 2014 is a difficult time for me – everything seems to happen all at once, as is often the case.

  First, the start of the celebrations to commemorate D-Day. As I had feared, I find that I am simply unable to listen to any information about the 70th anniversary of that historical day, much less watch footage. So on the eve of the anniversary of the Normandy landings, I watch an interview Putin is giving on French television. Disgusted with his phallocratic statements, I tweet: ‘Glad not to have to shake Putin’s hand’. Whether his comments were lost in translation essentially makes very little difference as my tweet related more broadly to his enterprise and everything he stands for as an individual in power: racism, homophobia, depriving people of freedoms, wanting to carve out a chunk of Ukraine… My tweet receives a mixed response, some support me and some insult me. It is the same old song: ‘In what capacity are you speaking out? You are nothing but the President’s cuckold.’ I don’t know what I should answer. I express my views just like the seven million other people who use that social network in France – people are free to ignore me.

  There is more in store for me: I hear that Closer is running a front-page story announcing that François is still seeing Julie Gayet in secret. He immediately sends me a text message swearing that it is a complete fabrication. It feels like déjà-vu, back to several months ago when he was fiercely denying the persistent rumour – called it ‘hogwash’, in fact.

  He assures me that this time he isn’t lying, says he has no reason to do so. I scroll through my phone and find his loving message from yesterday – he promises he will go with me wherever I go, that we will live together again. The whole business is insane now, it has become window-dressing – smoke and mirrors – and it is completely impossible to separate the lies from the truth.

  François over-exerts himself … Between dining with Barack Obama and another dinner with Vladimir Putin, he has found the time to text me again to deny the news that has emerged and assure me that I am the love of his life. He compartmentalises different areas of his life and somehow piles them all on top of each other – time is elastic for him. The President is trying to rekindle our romance, which keeps dying one more death – and all the while he is dealing with the most sensitive world affairs, on the eve of an historic commemoration. He is a politician through and through: he can lead several parallel lives, be active
on all fronts at once.

  At the end of the day, whether he is lying to me or not, does it really make a difference to me? I have decided to turn over a new leaf. This sudden new development helps me do that: it convinces me that François will never change, that lying is a deep-rooted part of him, part and parcel of his personality. ‘Powerful men soon lose any sense of limits,’ the psychiatrist who treated me after I went to hospital explained. They call it ‘winners’ syndrome’.

  I WITNESSED THE change in that man. In 2010, when we arrived at the Socialist Party’s summer conference in La Rochelle, he had lost a lot of weight. I encouraged him, I helped him, but I never forced him to lose weight. We were both fit and healthy. We had taken a month and a half holiday. I tried to prepare him for the way the press would react and how the physical change would be interpreted. He did not believe any of it. He could not believe that anyone might assume he was planning to run based on that fact that he was nearly two stone lighter on the scales. But that was precisely how all the journalists and many Socialist voters interpreted the physical change in him – as evidence of determination. People started saying that François Hollande was preparing to run for President.

  That September he was the star, everyone was talking about him. After five years of disgrace, five years in the political wilderness, it looked like he might get his chance to shine. At the time, people said I had a positive influence on him.

  Those favourable comments did not last. His new look, his changed taste in ties and the fact that he had lost the short-sleeved shirts were one thing – I could be credited for all of that – but his macho entourage would not hear of any involvement on my part politically speaking, even though I had worked as a political journalist for eighteen years. So I rarely took part in meetings with his ‘friends’.

  François nevertheless insisted that I attend an important meeting, early 2011, to decide how he would announce his candidacy. There couldn’t have been more than ten participants at the meeting – and I was the only woman – the idea being to guarantee confidentiality. Four of his closest political allies and friends were there, as well as two PR specialists. I felt like a wallflower among them. Until they unveiled their plan: an interview in the regional daily press. I couldn’t get over how unoriginal it was. I reminded them that Jacques Chirac had made his announcement in November 1994 in the exact same way.

  ‘But the idea is to reduce the risks as much as possible,’ one of them objected.

  I insisted: ‘Might as well not run if it’s about not taking any risks.’

  I think that from that day onward they had a problem with me. I had dared defy that group of proud peacocks who dreamt of power but were hardly ready for it. François had originally wanted to make a formal statement from his fiefdom in Tulle and I was convinced that it was a far better idea. The debate continued, but no decision was taken. When the meeting was over, François asked me what my take on it was: ‘The best solution is the one that feels most natural to you. You will shine, I don’t doubt it for a second.’

  He went for the Tulle option.

  But he had a long and lonely road ahead of him. No one took his candidacy in the Socialist primaries seriously. François had announced that the condition for him to run was that he be elected head of the Corrèze General Council. Everyone saw it as a fake challenge but there was a real risk involved. In the event, he overcame that first hurdle.

  He and I agreed that I would not be there on the day he announced his candidacy – 31 March 2011. He did not want the image of a couple going on the campaign trail together. As for me, I was still doing my political show, Campaign Profiles, on television, which made campaigning with him a potential conflict of interest. It was one of the worst frustrations of my life, it was absolute torture not to be there.

  I planned to watch him live on my computer, locked up alone in my Paris-Match office. I might even have missed it, had a colleague not warned me that the time had been changed. None of the members of François’ team had passed on the information. François had already begun his speech when I caught it.

  ‘I cannot accept the state France is in, I will not let France give in to pessimism … I cannot bear the suffering which too many French citizens experience.’

  His tone was firm and convincing throughout his eight minutes and seventeen seconds.

  ‘I will put France first,’ he said, with a newfound assurance. ‘I have decided to present my candidacy in the presidential election by running in the Socialist primary elections.’

  The crowd cheered and called out ‘François for President’.

  I burst into tears of emotion mingled with unspeakable frustration. How I wished I could have been by his side! I waited for his call, as nervous and excited as a young girl.

  He did call but it was a very short call – he was about to climb into his car with a journalist and head back to Paris. No time for banter. I waited for him for dinner as we had planned to go to the restaurant to celebrate. When he arrived, another disappointment was in store for me: his team had planned to send him to Boulogne-sur-Mer, if I remember correctly, so he could be with the fishermen at sunrise. He only had half an hour to spare. Again, it hadn’t occurred to anyone – not even him – to let me know.

  I called his campaign manager and we had a heated exchange. He said that from now on if I wished to spend an evening with François, I would have to run it by him. That was unthinkable. I agreed to the idea of a campaign and I was willing to concede that our personal life would never be the same. But asking someone for an appointment in order to see François was out of the question. François’ campaign manager would not budge, and neither would I, because we both knew that the lost ground would never be recovered.

  In the end, François settled the matter with a compromise – something he is very good at. He and I had a romantic dinner together and then he got on the road. The die was cast: we would all have to live in constant uncertainty – we would be dependent on François’ whims, his decisions or lack thereof.

  I felt a sense of loss grow in me from that moment. In the primaries campaign I can’t say I was written out of the script altogether, but it did feel like I had been given a role without any lines. Much like in a silent film noir, no one spoke to me: I was not kept informed of what was going on. Nor did I play a very active role: for the sake of remaining discreet, I did not go on trips with François.

  I only attended the very first meeting in Clichy. I sat at the back of the room, as if I was a stranger. So much so, in fact, that I was thrown out after the meeting because the theatre was closing and had to wait for François in my car for an hour and a half. François was in a room next door, with his favourite companions: the journalists. He did not bother to let me know. His candidacy absorbed all of his attention and I was blending into the background.

  AS FOR HIS entourage, their reactions to me varied. Many of them came to tell me that François was a changed man thanks to me; conversely, his old guard elephants kept me at arm’s length. It was out of the question that I should steal ‘their François’. Knives were out. Typical. But what did they want? What did they think? We were not playing the same game. Obviously not. It was all very childish.

  Many doubted that François’ candidacy had any future. When the preliminary meetings of the ‘Hollandaise’ political club – called Répondre à gauche14 – were held, there were more than a few empty seats. I was always there, in the back row. He pretended we did not know each other. I put it down to a sense of propriety.

  He outlined his campaign themes, which focused on youth – but his audience was very small – there were hardly even any journalists.

  His popularity ratings were not taking off. He remained stoic and showed no signs of discouragement, even in front of me. His dogged determination was inspiring. Meanwhile, for the press, ‘real’ campaigning only started when Dominique Strauss-Kahn got into the race. That was when the press started taking notice. Everyone who was anyone in politics and media want
ed to know whether François would stay the course. No matter how many times I repeated that he would, no one believed me. I for one was absolutely convinced of it. He was single-minded like never before. He felt certain he would beat Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He sensed that the people wanted stronger Socialist ideas, that it was important to position himself in opposition to the Sarkozy persona, his outrageous excesses, his fascination with money, his transgressions. In François’ mind, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Nicolas Sarkozy were similar animals.

  A secret rendezvous was organised between him and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, at his home, opposite the restaurant La Closerie des Lilas. I dropped François off in my car and went to wait for him at the bar. ‘The American’ wanted to sound out ‘the Man from Corrèze’.

  François later told me that he confirmed to him he would not pull out. Dominique Strauss-Kahn did not interpret their meeting in the same way. It was impossible to know who was telling the truth as there were only two players in their game of Liar’s Dice.

  On 15 May 2011, as we often did on weekends when the weather was nice, we went to my house in L’Isle-Adam. François enjoyed gardening and going to the market on Sunday – afterwards we would do justice to Jean-Jacques’ meat – my favourite butcher.

  That Saturday, we went to bed a little before midnight. I always keep my mobile near, just like every other worried mother when her children are out.

  Around 1 a.m., just as I was starting to nod off, my phone started to vibrate. A friend who was at the Cannes Film Festival – which I was heading to the following day for my show – had sent me a few text messages to let me know that Dominique Strauss-Kahn had been arrested.