Thank You for This Moment

by Valérie Trierweiler

  I had already left the Élysée Palace when the Morelle scandal came to light – the adviser had been using public funds to bring a shoeshiner to the Élysée and to order custom-made shoes. Still, in spite of our separation I warned François of the consequences of the scandal. He failed to see just how serious it was. ‘You can keep blinding yourself about Morelle, as you did for your Budget Minister, whose hidden accounts abroad were eventually brought to the public’s attention … Either way, I can assure you that the consequences will be the same.’ He replied that those were only anecdotes. ‘If you think having a shoeshiner come to the Élysée is an anecdote,’ I said, ‘you really have changed. No point me even mentioning the lab money.’

  I was probably not the only one to warn François because the message eventually sank in and Aquilino Morelle left the Élysée that very day.

  As for the business of the Budget Minister in charge of combating tax fraud having hidden accounts abroad, the President did not see it coming. And yet it is one of the rare subjects which I took a firm stance on with François, repeatedly – as soon as the very first articles came out about it. My attempts to be heard were fruitless, he simply was not having any of it – always asking me the same question: ‘Do you have proof?’

  No, obviously I did not have any proof. But I had eyes and a good memory. The first red flag had come a few years earlier. At the time, I was presenting a political show on television and I witnessed with utter incredulity how docile he was in a debate with Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right party. My team and I were shocked: the Socialist MP was behaving with her as a teenager would with a Hollywood star – with complete deference.

  Something was not right. When the press revealed that his bank account in Switzerland had been opened by a family friend, a far-right lawyer who was close to Marine Le Pen, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle started to slot together.

  I read the articles, listened to his defence: there was something dissonant. In December, during a Sunday lunch at the Valls’, conversation moved to the Budget Minister and his Swiss bank account.

  ‘It’s awful for him,’ said Manuel Valls, ‘he can’t sleep anymore.’

  Without missing a beat, I replied: ‘If he is not sleeping, he probably has a guilty conscience.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it, his dignity is being attacked.’

  Manuel Valls could have chosen another word than dignity. At the time, the debate on same-sex marriage was fuelling the ‘fascist-sphere’. On the internet, the far right was fuming over the issue and I was name-called and insulted day in and day out – which made me somewhat less empathetic than the other guests to the Budget Minister’s struggles with dignity. ‘What about me? What are people doing if not attacking my dignity when they call me the First Whore of France?’

  As one man, François, and his Minister of the Interior cried out: ‘That’s completely different!’

  Completely different, indeed: he was a politician, draped in his honour, and I was a woman without a real role, a voodoo doll to be insulted freely and dragged in the mud. I did not bother arguing. I was convinced that the Budget Minister’s head would get the chop. ‘I am sure he is lying,’ I insisted.

  We all stuck to our guns. The two men were protecting the Budget Minister because he was one of them, a politician and a friend. At the end of the conversation, Manuel Valls said about him: ‘You hold on, you hold on, until the moment when you just have to let go.’

  TWO WEEKS LATER, when we were relaxing at home at rue Cauchy, the Budget Minister asked to see François urgently. He arrived within the hour; I was the one who opened the door to him. I offered him a tea with honey and lemon, which he accepted. I poured it and retired to our room to give them some privacy. I came out to say goodbye to him before he left. As soon as I had closed the door behind him, I grilled François: ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ he said.

  ‘That can’t be, he wouldn’t come and take up the President’s time on a Sunday just to have tea.’

  ‘He is expecting more news to emerge.’

  I did not get any more information out of him. Meanwhile, that moment was François’ window of opportunity to seal his fate and forestall upcoming revelations. Two and a half months later, on 19 March 2013, when the Paris public prosecutor announced the launch of proceedings against the Budget Minister for ‘laundering the proceeds of tax fraud’, the minister resigned. It came as a brutal shock to François. Did he really remain incredulous until the very end? Why did he not take drastic action as soon as the minister came to our home that Sunday? François dislikes police cases, dossiers and rumours. Perhaps he did not want to believe it. When I saw François, he served up his customary sentence: ‘You were right, but how did you know he was lying?’

  I could not understand how he could be so blind or naive. And yet I was fooled by François’ lies, as he looked me in the eye. We all see what we want to see.

  The case was a devastating one. François clammed up. No one could get him out of that catatonic state. His closest advisers came to me for help. They were at a loss as to how to help him bounce back from the whole affair. One of his collaborators confessed that he had had it with the way the President handled things – he described it as ‘working in Bcc’. François was the same with me, increasingly retreating into silence and opacity. I felt like furniture. If that. His popularity ratings took another plunge. He considered a major Cabinet reshuffle, including the departure of his Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. He reshuffled the entire Cabinet before changing his mind again. He does not know what a final decision is.

  It took us a while to emerge from that dark time. The Élysée had become hell. In the first weeks following the election, I had wanted to take part in all the events. It is a journalist’s dream: to walk through the looking-glass. I got over the excitement of it and hardly ever attended honours ceremonies after that. Instead, I made time for what matters to me: humanitarian work, children and social work. The advisers’ games, the power plays, the bad-mouthing … I now knew how it worked. I had seen enough. Besides, François was not keen for me to interfere in that game, or for me to accompany him on public outings.

  In fairness, at times he had a revival of tenderness towards me, because he thought I was beautiful on that particular day or that particular hour. During those moments he looked at me with shiny eyes again, took my hand furtively, like he used to. In those instances, did our past suddenly come back to him? He can certainly never have doubted my sincerity and my faithfulness. Those fleeting moments of – recaptured – grace filled me with happiness. I chased away bad memories, put them down to pressure, to the burden of his responsibilities. François was working like a madman, evenings and weekends, never letting up. At least that was what he told me.

  Then, out of nowhere, he would become obnoxious again. As he did one evening in September 2013, for instance. We were having dinner outside my office, in the garden, at the foot of the giant bonsai Bernadette Chirac had bought her husband for his birthday. The following Saturday François was going to the Francophone Games in Nice. I told him I would like to go with him.

  ‘I don’t see what you would be doing there,’ he replied nastily.

  ‘It is on a Saturday evening, there will be a show, we could see it together.’

  ‘It’s not your place. The answer is no.’

  I sensed it was non-negotiable, I could not understand. Not only did he not give an inch but he moved his departure forward, to make absolutely sure he would leave alone. When I guessed what his strategy was I called his Chief-of-Staff to tell her that I would be going on the trip also. François’ rage intensified.

  ‘I would rather cancel than go with you.’

  I insisted. He used a visit to his father and brother as an excuse for me not to come. All the more reason.

  ‘You erased me from your public life, now you want to erase me from your personal life – what is left for me?’

  He kept
stubbornly quiet.

  The thought that he was meeting another woman did not cross my mind for even a second. I was overcome with despair and sought refuge in my bed. He saw how affected I was and yet he still left. I stayed alone. Suddenly remorseful, he called me to suggest that I get on a plane and join him. This time I was the one who said no.

  Now that I know he was unfaithful, those memories sting. I revisit the months, the weeks. I understand what I refused to see or what he hid from me with his artful lying, an art he has been cultivating for so long. It is summer outside, I feel like scorched earth. I sleep a lot, I welcome sleep like a blessing. To sleep without dreaming, without the pain ploughing its furrow, without the anger that eats away at me … I go back to bed in the morning and sometimes even in the afternoon.

  Six months have gone by already.

  Every day, François begs me to see him, to start over, for us to go back to the way we were before. Every day he sends me messages saying he loves me, suggests we show ourselves in public together. I turn down all of his suggestions. Never again will there be a ‘like before’. I lock myself up in my refusal to see him again. The firmer I am, the gentler his response. Too many lies, too many betrayals, too much cruelty. I have to hold out.

  Manage without him. Live without him. Think without him. Love without him. I could have decided to believe him and say yes to his proposal. Come back through the main door. I could have savoured getting my own back on all those who rejoiced in my departure. It would have been intoxicating, but only fleetingly so. And then what? What sort of life would I have led on the dying embers of our burned-down love?

  I would rather claw my way out of a pitch-black hole than live in the grey zone forever. I could have got the ‘Madame wing’ back. Instead of that I got two wings back: two wings to get off the ground.

  I MEET UP with my friends from the Secours populaire, which never fails to kick me out of my lethargy and make me want to move forward again. We are preparing the Secours populaire’s 70th anniversary – it was born out of the French Resistance. I am a fan of Secours populaire’s philosophy and I have a lot of respect for its leaders. Julien Lauprêtre has been at the helm of Secours pop’ for nearly sixty years. I call him ‘my President’. We met in October 2012. At the time I had just started tiptoeing back into the Élysée Palace, following the score of books published about me. A month later I received a letter of apology from a man who had co-authored the worst book of the lot. He had already wreaked havoc with his defamations and his letter did nothing to erase the harm he had done to me.

  I had yet to find a way of making the most of my new role as First Lady – a role which is both a beautiful and poisoned gift. Being the President’s partner, I received a lot of gifts, mostly luxury beauty products. I wanted to donate them to women living in poverty, but there weren’t enough of them to make the donation worthwhile. So I called on big brand names to donate more, and they were game. My office soon filled up with boxes. François even asked me whether I was planning on opening up shop.

  I then contacted Secours populaire and told them I had a proposal to make. Julien Lauprêtre came in with three of his collaborators. He started out by recounting his incredible journey – the story of Secours populaire. I was worried about his reaction to my idea but I went ahead anyway. His response was full of enthusiasm: ‘That is exactly what we want – to give people their dignity back. Why don’t you come and hand the gifts out yourself?’

  I explained that I was not trying to put myself forward and that, as result of the difficult start I had got off to, I was actively avoiding the spotlight. He convinced me to get involved regardless, and I owe him a lot for that. That day Julien Lauprêtre helped me get back on track.

  And so, without any media coverage, I went to bring the beauty products to four women’s shelters. I met isolated women, with their children – some had run away from domestic violence. In those lives full of misery, my perfumes and lipsticks can only have been insignificant tokens, but they were that little bit of unnecessary luxury that can help you hold your head up high.

  I remember the first cheap lipstick I was able to buy – I remember how feminine it made me feel. Until then, I had borrowed lipstick from my mother or from my grandmother, Simone – from whom I also borrowed rice powder, and even though it was a down-market product I will never forget that smell. My diminutive grandmother who raised us alongside my parents – she may have been only a seamstress but she prided herself on her appearance. She truly had magic in her fingertips and I still wear some of the clothes she knitted. I have kept the crochet baby clothes she made for my children. When I think of her, I can still taste the Pulmoll sweets my brothers and sisters and I were forever knocking on her door for. Those memories made me feel close to the women I visited at the shelter. Without the money my grandmother contributed with her seamstress work, I too could have been a Secours populaire child. Growing up, we were lucky enough to go on holiday by the sea every year. So many children are far less fortunate.

  My favourite memory of the twenty months I spent at the Élysée is my outing in Cabourg with five thousand Secours populaire children. I travelled by coach with the Fédération Clichy-la-Garenne. We left at 7 a.m. One hundred and twenty coaches in total left for the seaside resort made famous by the French author Marcel Proust. The departure went off smoothly, with the children still half asleep. After a pit stop at a motorway rest area – apple compote and brioche snacks – the children started to get excited. They all wore a cap, colour-coded by département – yellow, red, blue, green. The children saw the elegant villas before they saw the sea – for the very first time.

  ‘It’s beautiful here, every family has their own house!’ I heard one of them say in wonderment. Their world was their cité, their council housing, and most of them had never seen anything else. Another little boy said to me: ‘I would really like to come back with my mum so she can see this too!’

  That day, I saw the real face of poverty in France. I saw some children hide away their sandwich to bring it back and share it at home. I noticed that some of the little ones did not have bathing suits and were wearing old frayed clothes.

  Before we set off, I had been wondering whether a day at the seaside was an inadequate way of helping them. I saw I had been wrong. A single day of happiness, just one day, opened their world, allowed them to see another horizon than their cité. In September they too would have a holiday adventure to talk about.

  That day, 28 August 2013, filled me with just as much joy as it did them. François Hollande did not want to take any holidays that summer, but I got my DfH, Day for the Holidayless! The children did not know my name or what I looked like but my role had been explained to them. When the young boys and girls came to talk to me they would ask: ‘Is it true that you are the President’s wife? And you came to see us?’

  Without the Secours populaire, they would just be forgotten, those who are given so few opportunities to make it, locked up in their banlieue council blocks, outside of town, outside of life.

  I lifted my trousers up to feel the seawater. In the general melee of cameras and children, I got soaked – in fact I very nearly fell in the water! I had barely just got my balance back when a little girl pushed through the human wall to launch herself into my arms. ‘I have been looking for you everywhere since this morning!’ she exclaimed.

  Childhood can be a time when nothing will get in the way of determination. Houssainatou did not let go of my hand all day after that, breaking the rules, because each group was meant to stay in its own spot. In the evening, saying goodbye to Houssainatou was tough. I did not know her surname but she was in all the pictures with me, clinging onto me.

  When I got back to Paris I wanted to send her a picture and a little note. We had to do a little detective work. ‘You looked for me up and down the beach. I looked for you in all around Île-de-France,’ I wrote. She wrote back a beautiful letter. Six months later she was one of the Secours populaire children who came to t
he Élysée for Christmas.

  At the end of the day, the volunteers and I stopped in Cabourg for red wine and saucisson.24 That is the Socialist Party we know and love, the one I hail from.

  My Élysée team and I then allowed ourselves a little break before heading back to Paris, because we were in such demand all day that we had not so much as touched any food. We tucked into a hot camembert with French fries and andouille in a little restaurant. Such a strange and wonderful combination really does exist!

  What a beautiful day from start to end … even though the next day I was black-and-blue – a souvenir of the children’s pushing and shoving and giving effusive hugs.

  Secours populaire did not forget about me after François Hollande and I separated. The team leader sent me messages and the children sent me drawings. We are working on a few projects together. This summer I am going back to Ouistreham, in Normandy, with the children. I have now roped my friend Saïda into volunteering with me. She too could have been a Secours populaire child in Roubaix, where she was born. We share the same enthusiasm. We were lucky enough to make it.

  Spending time with these little French children does not mean I cannot see beyond our borders, where, on top of poverty, tragedy and violence strike. When a child is suffering, his nationality does not matter. Every day, I fight to rescue from oblivion the young Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. Their suffering is met with widespread indifference and yet they are the symbol of the oppression of women throughout the world. No one cares about them any more. Not the great and the good, nor the stars up in arms (for a day). Everyone lets it happen.

  Just as the world stood by while thousands of women were raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo… I travelled to the DR Congo twice in two years. I discovered the tragic fate of women in that country in Dr Mukwege’s hospital in Bukavu in the South Kivu region. Women are systematically assaulted there, they are raped in every village – all the time, wherever they go. Hell as painted by Jérôme Bosch, in a tropical setting. Age is not a factor. Temporary derangement does not come into it. Armed men mutilate women’s reproductive organs to prevent them from giving birth. They use rape as a weapon of war.