Thank You for This Moment

by Valérie Trierweiler

  Solenne later wrote to me to say that moment had changed her life. The few lines of the dictation took her two hours to write because her motor skills were so limited but, for the first time in her life, she was the centre of attention. I kept her letter like a treasure, and wrote back to her. I invited Solenne to the children’s Christmas at the Élysée that year, even though invitations were meant to be only for children under twelve. I wanted that Christmas to be special for both Solenne and the young orphaned girls. I wanted to find an imaginative and personal present, rather than a formal present, to mark the occasion. As I knew that Solenne cared about her appearance, I asked the President’s Chief of Staff permission to buy six bags by designer Vanessa Bruno – a brand teenagers in posh Parisian neighbourhoods go crazy for.

  ‘That’s expensive, why don’t you get copies instead?’ she replied. Proof that attending the École nationale d’administration doesn’t necessarily make up for lack of common sense.

  ‘I can’t do that,’ I said. ‘We are at the Élysée Palace, we can’t buy counterfeit products and give them out as gifts!’

  She may have had a point about the price, but the Élysée’s attempts to be ‘normal’ and reduce spending can sometimes lead to strange decisions being made. For instance, on the grounds that it was free, a show featuring Asterix and Obelix came to the Élysée. The producer had one condition: that the red carpet be rolled out for the actors – in full Asterix and Obelix guise – and that the President welcome them in person, on the front steps of the Élysée, as if they were heads of state… I stopped François just in time, fearing that he would be the object of ridicule. Then again, it would hardly have been more of an embarrassment than images of a President hiding under a full-face helmet.

  In any event, we found a free solution for the girls: they got their authentic Vanessa Bruno bags, generously donated by the creator herself when she found out who the presents were for.

  With her mother’s help, I was also able to surprise Solenne by picking her up after school to take her for tea at the Élysée Palace. My security guards happily agreed to carry Solenne up the stairs.

  Solenne and I have kept in touch over the last two years. I saw her ten days ago, she was ecstatic about getting her handi-dog after a two-year wait. She went to Alençon with her father to tame her new friend, who would be helping her in her everyday life. A €15,000 friend, because it is very expensive to train handi-dogs and then teach the two new companions to interact with one another. All this is made possible thanks to donations, which are infinitely precious.

  Over the months, I realised that I had a role to play as a First Lady, appealing to people’s generosity to help fund the organisation. The disability requires sophisticated equipment which is not fully reimbursed by French social security.

  I am reminded of young Théo in his motorised wheelchair. Théo had both arms and both legs amputated when he was six following a very rare form of meningitis. His idol, Philippe Croizon, also had a motorised wheelchair – as he had also lost his limbs, as the result of electrocution. I see Philippe Croizon on television and hear him speak on the radio. He is a hero to me and impresses me with his strength: he swam across the Channel and is now planning to swim four straights separating the five continents. When Nicolas Sarkozy was President, he awarded him the Légion d’honneur. Philippe’s fame is what helps him find the sponsors who allow him to live out his dream.

  I pestered François to see Philippe but he would not. In the end, I invited Philippe to come and see me at the Élysée, and made sure François would drop in at the end of the meeting. Philippe, his partner, his agent, and I had been talking for an hour when François joined us. He was affable and cheerful, as he knows how to be. Over dinner that evening, I asked François what he had thought of Croizon.

  ‘I don’t like disabled people who trade on their disability.’

  I was gobsmacked. What had happened to the man I had known who could be so sensitive, who knew how to find soothing and tender words? How could he have become so harsh, insensitive and cutting – a cynic who aims where it hurts? He knew about my father’s ordeal and Philippe Croizon’s suffering was far worse. I reminded François that disability benefits were only €790 a month. When I was growing up, it was even less, and there were eight of us to feed on those benefits – until my mother found a job as a cashier. François did not answer. He had already moved on to another dossier in his head.

  I stayed in touch with Philippe Croizon, someone who, unlike François, knows how to communicate his strength to others. Philippe continues to check in on me, he worries about me. We went to Vichy together to support Théo in his swimming training. Théo wants to become a champion, like his idol Philippe: his dream is to take part in the Paralympics. To have met this twelve-year-old boy is to know what it is to be exceptional – his determination is beyond belief. He has now been a runner-up in three junior competitions in France.

  I can certainly say that I experienced some precious moments and that I met some truly extraordinary people when I was First Lady at the Élysée. But not one of those experiences or people were in politics.

  When I was dismissed, I publicly thanked the Élysée staff. The cooks, the florists, the doctors, the maîtres d’, and so many more… All of them helped me through many a difficult moment. I want to make special mention of one of the maîtres d’, who always knew how to brighten up my day. Not to mention my former team: all five of them showed me affection and I really did develop a strong bond with them.

  This summer Fort de Brégançon will be open to the public. It is the summer residence of the President of France, but the current President will not spend his holiday there after our separation. It is all over the media and the press has decided to retrace the history of presidential holidays. Out comes – again – the fabricated story about some pillows I allegedly ordered two years ago, when we arrived at the Élysée!

  That summer, François sent me on a recce with a former photographer hired by the Élysée. The idea was for me to describe the place to him and discover whether there was a solution to the paparazzi problem. I spent half a day visiting the port. Save setting up two large partitions on the beach, I requested no changes. But only a few days later I found out, thanks to a rumour doing the rounds on the internet and in the press, that I had supposedly ordered luxury cushions and outdoor furniture, racking up a bill of tens of thousands of euros!

  Our first holidays started with that public scandal. What an irresistible fantasy: a parvenue who thinks she is the next Marie Antoinette and spends public money on tantrums was too good to be untrue. I asked the Élysée repeatedly to issue a statement denying this tall story – it may have been against me but it impacted the President too. Nothing was done.

  François was reluctant to upset the press, even when it transformed hearsay into so-called information. To him, the news is a river that carries everything with it, fact and fiction, and there is no use in swimming against the current. He preferred to find out which way the wind was blowing and play with it.

  Meanwhile, the message from the Élysée was not to take the whole thing too seriously. Two years later, I had proof that the poison was still seeping out since the press reported that the Élysée had erased the traces of my tantrum after my departure. Obviously there had to be an explanation to the fact that any visitors to the fort would not find anything – neither overpriced cushions, nor garden furniture carved out of precious wood!

  Our summer holidays back in August 2012 did get off to a bad start. I had to put up with the masquerade of our departure by train. The holidays of ‘President Normal’ were dramatically staged by the Élysée’s PR service, in front of dozens of cameras and photographers assembled on the platform at the Gare de Lyon station, in front of our train. The whole thing was ridiculous in my opinion; I hated putting on the whole show. It shows in the pictures: I look like I got out of bed on the wrong side, I am frowning and my features are frozen.

  We did not crave
the same things: François wanted a walkabout or two, he had been missing them since his election, while I was expecting a little bit of privacy after a two-year political campaign. If you stay within Fort de Brégançon you can hide away, and the garden and the view are magnificent. Suddenly, everything seemed to calm down and it was such a pleasure. Though the rooms were dark, he and I spent lovely moments together inside the fort. I had brought a couple of dozen books among the new titles that were coming out in September, to prepare my book column. Every day, François received phone calls from heads of state and the Fort’s aide-de-camp brought him new dossiers. He worked for hours while I read. We were glad to spend time together when we had finished our work.

  Unfortunately, we could not set foot outside without being chased by a pack of journalists. I asked them repeatedly to leave us alone. But François would tell them not to mind me: ‘Go ahead.’

  He was still glowing from the halo of the campaign, when his every move – a rushed factory visit, a muddy farmyard, a supermarket aisle – was followed by a horde of photographers and journalists with their cameras, feverishly collecting precious snippets uttered by the candidate. But now that he had become President his image was that of a man who spent his time on the beach, walking around in a polo shirt, followed by a sullen woman. No matter that the truth was quite the opposite: he didn’t stop working and we also managed to finally regain some moments of calm and intimacy. The illusions that images can create…

  We left the fort from the back, by boat, and managed to steal a few moments and escape the paparazzi, to cycle around Porquerolles and walk around the magical islands of Port-Cros. All the French Presidents before François Hollande were entitled to their rest. The French will remember images of a tanned Pompidou lounging on a deck chair with his wife, of François Mitterrand in a light suit and straw boater at his property in Latche.

  A single picture of François at his desk in the famous office of the General de Gaulle would have been enough to clamp the gossips’ mouths shut. In fact, at the end of his stay François wanted to organise a meeting to discuss the budget with Jean-Marc Ayrault and both the Minister of the Economy and the Budget Minister. But the Prime Minister was reluctant to leave his holiday home in Brittany and François did not insist… The meeting would no doubt have helped lift the press sulk and might have mitigated the negative opinion the public had at the start of his presidency. Then again, politics would be so simple if it was only about images.

  By September 2012 François had already started his freefall in the polls – it was a slap in the face. He saw a causal effect between that and his holiday and decided to go from one extreme to the other: no more holidays or even weekends. For years he had been on a media drip and was easily swayed by everything the media commented on – written or spoken.

  It was in the press that I learned the following year that we would not go back to Brégançon and that he had complained of having spent nightmarish holidays there. Once again, it was in the press that I heard we would only be spending a few days in La Lanterne over the summer of 2013 by way of a holiday.

  Last year, I decided to take my children on holiday for a week in Greece, in a hotel I booked through a discount holiday website. I was probably the first First Lady to have purchased a low-cost holiday when all the leaders in the world were offering to loan splendid properties to the French President.

  It was only once I had left the Élysée and no longer had to answer to anyone that I finally felt free to do as I pleased with that austerity rule. I said yes to a break in the sun with my friends Valérie and Saïda. We went to a beautiful hotel for eight days, off-season. I needed to get away from Paris, I needed to feel protected. I needed to be ‘elsewhere’. I want to thank them: they did me a world of good at that moment. I know what I owe them and a few others I will not name in this book because they are better off remaining anonymous. I know the strength of friendship between women and it saved me.

  The misunderstandings between us started to build up after we got back from Brégançon. In autumn 2012, I started to wonder why the man I loved so passionately was gradually distancing himself from me. I opened up about it to a friend, whose answer, if rather blunt, contained an element of truth: ‘It seems to me that his love is linked to his popularity ratings.’

  The primaries, followed by the presidential campaign, were the peak of his life. I remember that a few days before the second round it was as if François was levitating, carried by the crowd, inhabited by collective energy. Once he was elected his popularity ratings became of utmost concern to him. It brings him back to that kick he got – like getting a hard-drug hit – from meeting the cheering crowds who were carried by everything he embodied.

  With each new poll I saw him diminish. And without fail, immediately afterwards his attitude towards me would harden a little more each time. He needed someone to blame his fall in popularity on. He could not be responsible, so I had to be, and others.

  Officially he pretended he wasn’t affected but that was very obviously untrue. I became his lightning rod – for absolutely everything that happened to him. Unemployment soared and I bore the consequences. For every false note from a ministry, every factory closure, I knew I was in for trouble: he was increasingly distant and cutting. With everyone. Everything was wrong. Down to the menus – which he chose himself – and the bread that was never fresh enough. Everything was my fault.

  For months, his popularity dropped inexorably in opinion polls. The first months of his five-year term were a succession of air-pockets. He had always praised my political flair. So, every evening when I saw him, I tried to explain what I felt was wrong in terms of PR and policies. But he did not want to hear about the mistakes. He shut down and got angry. The plunge was fast and no doubt harsh. The amateurism image did a lot of damage, not to mention the various ‘bum notes’. In his eyes the Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, whom he himself had chosen, was starting to have all the flaws in the world. Minus that of disloyalty. Was there still someone who found favour with him? All I heard was criticism of this or that person.

  Early on, when François started mentioning Manuel Valls, his Minister of the Interior, as a replacement for Jean-Marc Ayrault, I was quick to warn him: ‘You know that if you pick Valls, you are giving him the car and the key,’ I said. ‘And he’s going to clear off with the lot. If you are in a weak position in 2017, he is going to call for primaries so that he can stand.’

  ‘If I am in a weak position I won’t run.’

  ‘Yes, you will, you’ll get back on your feet and you are a brilliant campaigner.’ I still believed in him.

  Some evenings, I made good resolutions. I promised myself I would not talk to him about the problems of that day. I tried to find positive subjects, and when I failed I kept my mouth shut or spoke of things concerning everyday life. I was wasting my time: he took over the conversation and attacked some of his advisers or his ministers. He was losing his clear-sightedness and cool – which had always been his strength until then. He could not see what was happening. I made a mistake at that moment: I failed to see that he needed something else. That his distress called for reassurance and sweetness. Seeking refuge in the arms of an actress who thought he was ‘magical’ and gazed at him like a young girl in love was no doubt more pleasurable for him – and it certainly was the easy way.

  Going from the fairy tale that was the electoral campaign to the barrenness of power was a real shock. One Saturday evening at La Lanterne, a few weeks after the election, we were watching images of Johnny Hallyday’s concert at the Stade de France. He was mesmerised; it was as though he had been hypnotised. I could read his mind easily: ‘You miss it, don’t you?’ He smiled: yes, he did. He and I knew what it was all about. I had covered so many electoral campaigns and accompanied him to countless meetings: the walkabouts, the warmth of the crowds cheering, of the murmurs of assent and the laughter, his voice cajoling and winning the crowd over, the studied body language of candidates… I was o
ne of the rare journalists – and at times I really was the only one – who had covered his first steps in politics. I could never get enough of his speeches. When our close relationship turned into love he would send me hidden messages in those speeches that only I could pick up on.

  Within the Élysée, François did not distinguish between those who were by his side for his sake and to serve the state and those who had only joined him to serve their own career and use his influence to their advantage. I was especially wary of Aquilino Morelle. The President’s special adviser was certainly that … special. We simply did not get on. He was still the campaign director of a rival candidate during the primaries, when he came to sell himself to François at rue Cauchy… I have always abhorred duplicitous behaviour.

  When François was appointed, Morelle became the man who wrote his speeches, or rather the draft versions of his speeches. François tore into him repeatedly in front of me when he came to our home during the campaign. Morelle felt humiliated and took his resentment out on me.

  Once he had made it to the Élysée, Morelle took over the best office, the most beautiful car, and strutted up and down like a peacock. I heard several accounts of his methods and his behaviour, often against me. I spoke to François about it but he brushed my concerns about the things I had heard: ‘Do you have any proof?’

  ‘No, just first-hand accounts.’

  That did not satisfy him.

  Aquilino Morelle could not have been happier about my departure in January 2014. In fact, he helped pen the eighteen-word dismissal statement – cold contempt is very much his style. In May 2014, it was my turn to be thrilled at his forced resignation. All by himself, he tripped up on the laces of his custom-made shoes. No one would be shining his shoes any more. No more bootlicking for him. His vanity was his downfall.