Revenge OF THE Rottweiler
She was France’s famously ferocious First Lady until the priapic President ditched her for an actress. Now she’s getting her own back in these devastatingly venomous memoirs
UNTIL January this year, most people assumed I was leading the kind of life many women would envy: dining with world leaders, chatting to Michelle Obama in the White House, having fittings for couture gowns by Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. All this and more was part of my role as the First Lady of France, consort to President François Hollande.
We may not have been married, but I was wildly in love with him. No man had ever touched my heart so deeply, and I expected to be with him for ever. Our passionate affair had begun nearly nine years before, when everyone was dismissing François as a spent political force. even I could barely believe it when he was elected President in May 2012.
How quickly a fairy tale can unravel. By the start of 2014, the entire edifice of my gilded life lay in ruins. Instead of preparing for a state visit or a grand banquet, I was lying in a hospital bed — weeping for the lost love of my life and knowing that nothing could ever be the same again. My descent into hell began in January this year, when a well-meaning friend sent me a short text. All it said was that a magazine was about to publish a picture of the President with a young French actress called Julie Gayet.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that name: rumours that Julie, 42, and 60-year-old François were having an affair had been poisoning my life for months. But even then I simply couldn’t bring myself to believe them.
So I merely forwarded the text to François, asking if he’d done anything wrong. ‘ No, nothing,’ he replied immediately.
I should have known he was lying — I’d caught him telling fibs in the past — but I truly felt that our love was unbreakable. I didn’t even bother raising the subject of Gayet over dinner that evening.
The f ollowing day, my phone vibrated again. My friend had more information: the picture would show François outside Gayet’s flat and it was going on the cover of Closer magazine. Again I forwarded the message — but this time François replied: ‘Meet me at the flat at 3pm.’
By the time I arrived at our private apartment in the Élysée Palace, which overlooks a park in central Paris, he was already there, sitting on one side of our large bed.
‘So?’ I said, sitting down on the other side. ‘So it’s true,’ he said. ‘What’s true? You’re sleeping with that girl?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted, half reclining to lean on his forearm.
We were sitting quite close to one another now, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. I started hurling questions at him: ‘ How did it happen? Why? When did it start?’ ‘A month ago,’ he said. I was strangely calm. OK, how about a Clintonesque strategy — public apologies and a promise never to see her again? We could start over, I pleaded, thinking only that I didn’t want to lose him.
But as we talked, his lies started to surface and the truth gradually emerged. First, he confessed the affair had been going on for longer than a month. Then he said it was three months. Then six, nine, and finally a year.
‘We’re not strong enough — you’ll never be able to forgive me,’ he said. And with that, he went back to his office for a meeting. I stayed locked up in the room all afternoon, eyes glued to my phone as I checked Twitter updates to see if anyone had more information on the photos.
THEN I texted my closest friends and told my three sons and my mother about the looming scandal. When François returned for dinner, he seemed more down than I was. I found him kneeling on the bed, head in his hands. He was in a state of shock. ‘What are we going to do?’ he asked.
I was still desperately hoping to save our relationship — but just then, for some reason, I was more concerned about political damage.
A President cannot lead his country into war, I told him, if he runs off at every opportunity to see an actress. A President cannot behave in this way when factories are shutting down, unemployment is rising and his popularity ratings have plummeted . . .
But François asked me to stop listing the disastrous consequences: he knew them all. Then he gulped down a few mouthfuls of dinner before leaving for a meeting. I later learned that the idea of issuing a statement about our separation was raised at that very meeting. My fate was sealed, but I didn’t know that yet.
When François returned at 10.30pm, he seemed lost and disorientated, and refused to answer any questions. At that point, I phoned the Secretary General of the Élysée [the President’s right-hand man] and told him I wanted to see him.
Now it was my turn to use the quasisecret corridor that leads from the private apartment to the presidential floor. As soon as I arrived, the Secretary General wrapped me in his arms and I burst into tears.
Like me, he found it hard to believe that the President of France was having an affair, and he listened sympathetically when I said I was prepared to forgive François.
BACK to the bedroom again. François took a sleeping pill and slept for a few hours, but I lay a wake, tormenting myself with endless questions.
I caught barely an hour’s sleep. Finally at 5am I got up to switch on the TV and discovered that we were headline news. Yesterday, the whole thing had seemed fantastical, but now it was only too real.
François woke up. I was not going to be able to cope, I could tell. My resolve weakened — I did not want to hear any of it. I ran to the bathroom and took the little plastic bag hidden in a drawer among my beauty products. It contained sleeping pills — several sorts, tablets and sleeping syrup.
François f ollowed me into the bathroom and tried to snatch the bag from me. I ran into the bedroom. He caught the bag and it tore. Pills tumbled onto the bed and the floor. I managed to grab a few of them and swallowed what I could.
All I wanted was to sleep — I could not bear to live through the next few hours. I could sense the hailstorm that was preparing to hit me and I wanted to batten down the hatches — I did not have the strength to withstand it. I wanted to escape one way or another.
Then I passed out.
Before I knew about the pictures of François in a motorbike helmet on his way to meet his mistress on the back of a scooter, I’d have staked my life on the fact that he’d never betray me — not in a million years.
We’d first met 26 years ago, when I was a young political journalist. After I moved on to Paris-Match, and was assigned to cover the Socialist Party, we had regular friendly lunches to discuss politics.
It was actually François’s partner Ségolène royal, a senior Socialist politician herself, who first suspected something was afoot. Certainly no such thought had entered my head.
Marching up to our restaurant table one day in 2000, she made a scene. ‘Caught red-handed. I hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ she said icily. When I told her we’d just been discussing the Tour de France, she spat back: ‘Stop taking me for a fool!’
The lunches continued. Five years on, by which time François was first secretary of the Socialist Party, his press officer called me.
‘Valérie, have you still not noticed that Hollande is madly in love with you?’ she asked.
I was stunned. I knew that he was attracted to me, that we had an undeniable bond — but love? It seemed absurd. Forbidden. I was married to an editor at Paris-Match, by whom I had three children, and François and Ségolène had four.
A few weeks later, on April 14, 2005, I accompanied him in his car on a political jaunt to central France. We talked and talked — but not about us. I planned to sleep in Limoges that night. François had to push on to Tulle, the town he represents. But before he left, he took me to a café.
That’s when he told me he had real feelings for me, but wasn’t interested in merely having a fling. I replied that a relationship
was simply impossible; neither of us was free. What changed everything was a kiss. It was indescribable, like no other kiss I’d ever experienced before. François did not drive to Tulle that evening. Rapidly, I fell more deeply in love than I’d ever imagined possible. We were like two magnets, always touching, incapable of keeping our hands off each other. Several times, for the sake of our partners and children, we tried to separate — but we were utterly miserable without each other. My husband was distraught. As for Ségolène, when she found out about us, she exacted the ultimate political price: instead of letting François go for ward as a presidential candidate for the Socialist Party, she insisted on standing herself. In effect, he had to choose between his political future and me — and he chose me.
After her el ection defeat, Ségolène suggested that he’d regretted his decision and was considering going back to her. I dismissed this at the time — but now I can’t help wondering if she was right.
I know all too well just how duplicitous François Hollande can be . . .
THE first time he asked me to marry him was in 2010, but my divorce was too recent; I wasn’t ready. The second time was in September 2012, after he was elected President. We even discussed having very a small wedding before Christmas. But a month before the date, he told me that he no longer wanted to go ahead with it.
Of course, Julie Gayet was already a part of his life, but I didn’t know that then.
So how did we reach this point? The truth is that I’d started feeling uneasy during his presidential campaign, when he suddenly became cagey. He was barely making time to see me: I sensed our closeness was eroding.
I didn’t know then that Gayet was already hanging around, like a snake in the grass. Then, after François won the election, his poll ratings all too soon started going into freefall. All I heard from him was criticism of his advisers or ministers — particularly the Prime Minister, whom he had chosen.
He reshuffled the entire Cabinet before changing his mind again. And he retreated increasingly into silence and opacity.
As for me, I felt like a piece of furniture. If that. Unfortunately, I failed to see that what François really needed at that time was r eassurance and sweetness. That’s why he sought refuge in the arms of an actress who gazed at him in rapture and thought he was ‘magical’.
Rumours about Gayet had been surfacing since October 2012.
First, I heard that François had taken her home late one night after a dinner. Not true, he said: he’d gone to her flat for a dinner held specifically for him to meet a certain businessman.
I knew that was a lie. I distinctly remembered the night he’d met that businessman — and he’d told me there were just the two of t hem. Plus he’d come home early. The lie grated. Yet still I chose to believe that Right-wing e nemies were fuelling the continuing rumours.
In March 2013, I decided to speak to Gayet myself. My phone call didn’t seem to surprise her. She told me the gossip was equally unpleasant for her, and agreed to put out a statement — in which she threatened to sue anyone who repeated rumours of an affair.
I may be naive, but I’m amazed at how people can lie so effortlessly. The gossip mill continued to grind. ‘Swear to me on my son’s life that it’s not true and I won’t bring it up again,’ I said to François one day. He swore on my son’s life — adding that I was becoming tiresome with all this ‘hogwash’.
That December, I watched a TV programme, in which Gayet was promoting one of her films. When another actor mentioned that the President had visited the filmset, she didn’t deny it; she j ust simpered. I immediately tried to reach François. When he called
back, I demanded to know: ‘Did you go on the set of her film?’
He assured me that he hadn’t. Angrily, I asked him to issue a statement about the so-called affair, and he promised it would be done within the hour.
Next, I left several messages on Gayet’s voicemail, asking her to call me back, but she never did.
Ironically, I too had ignored calls in 2006 from Ségolène Royal — when I was Francois’s mistress. Infidelity is indeed an infernal cycle.
That evening, over dinner, François carefully avoided the subject of Gayet. He was so evasive that it was unbearable.
I said I didn’t understand why the girl was refusing to dispel doubt about the filmset visit. But instead of reassuring me, he immediately leapt to Gayet’s defence — which made me fume with outrage.
During the full-blown row that ensued, he spat some horrendous things at me. I simply couldn’t understand his attitude. He’d become so cold, so different — indifferent, even — and I felt for the first time he didn’t love me any more.
On the spur of the moment, I went to the bathroom to fetch my sleeping pills and swallowed eight in front of him. He tried to drag me back to the bathroom to make me throw up, but I collapsed on the sofa.
It was as if I were in a semi-coma: I could no longer talk or feel my body, but I could hear. Not that he said a word. He didn’t even utter my name. He just straightened my legs, touched my forehead and left.
No doctor was called; no one came to check on me. The Élysée is a beehive, the heart of power, but private apartments are like bubbles of silence, protected areas no one dares penetrate.
I don’t know whether François came back, whether he slept by my side. The sleeping pills — which I’d taken as a cry for help — turned the lights out in my brain.
I woke the next morning at midday. Despite feeling nauseous, I dressed myself in a Dior gown for a party we were hosting. As soon as François saw me, he said: ‘ You’re breathtaking — you look like a queen.’
Despite our quarrels, we were still attracted to one another. One minute, we tore each other apart and the next we’d passionately make up.
Barely a month later came those Closer magazine photographs, and the confirmation that Gayet really was his lover, followed by my second overdose. This time, two doctors were with me when I came round. They wanted to send me to a psychiatric ward, but I insisted on seeing François first.
As soon as he came into the room, my legs gave way and I fell to the floor. I could no longer stand, but the doctors told me I had to go. Immediately.
Two security guards hoisted me up by the armpits. Then, like a ragdoll, the First Lady was propelled down the stairs and out through the doors of the Élysée Palace.
In hospital, I remained weak, with dangerously low blood pressure.
It was day five before François came to visit. All I can recall is saying I’d go with him that week to a New Year’s event we always attended in Tulle. And when he told me I couldn’t come, I said I’d drive there in my own car. The next day, I took a turn for the worse and collapsed. It was only later I found out why: I was being heavily sedated to stop me from going to Tulle.
My body simply couldn’t cope with all this medication. Everything was difficult: getting up, taking a shower, brushing my hair.
The nurses said: ‘Don’t let yourself go!’ They’d knew that as First Lady, I ’ d always taken care of my appearance; yet now I was a wreck who didn’t even bother to change her pyjamas.
There were to be two more painful meetings with François before I finally accepted that our love had died. By the second one, I’ d recovered sufficiently to move back into our own flat in Paris.
The tone of the discussion was calm and cold. It was all so sad.
Before he left, I demanded he give me his key. ‘You’re throwing me out of your life — this isn’t your home any more,’ I told him. ‘I want to be free to invite whomever I want, whenever I want.’
He didn’t like hearing that at all. Although he’d been cheating on me for over a year, he simply couldn’t stand the idea of me having a life of my own . . .
ADAPTED from thank You For this Moment: A Story Of Love, power And Betrayal by Valérie trierweiler is published on November 25 by Biteback, priced £18.99. to order a copy for £15.19 (p&p free for limited time) visit mailbookshop.co.uk Offer price valid until November 25.