PARIS: A heated passion, a tumultuous break-up and a desperate bid at reconciliation: For the first time, France’s former first lady spills the beans about her tempestuous relationship with President Francois Hollande.
In a kiss-and-tell memoir, written and published in the utmost secrecy, Valerie Trierweiler charts the highs and lows of her time with Hollande, whose popularity is already at historic lows and who could suffer further embarrassment from the new revelations. In extracts published yesterday by glossy magazine Paris-Match and daily Le Monde, Trierweiler describes the bust-up in the presidential bedroom when news broke in January of Hollande’s affair with actress Julie Gayet.
“I crack up. I don’t want to hear that, I rush into the bathroom. I grab the little plastic bag with the sleeping pills,” she recounts in an episode run in the weekly magazine. “Francois follows me. He tries to snatch the bag... The pills spill over the bed and on the ground... I swallow what I can. I want to sleep. I don’t want to live through the coming hours... I lost consciousness.”
The glamorous journalist, now 49, got together with Hollande in 2005 while he was in a relationship with Segolene Royal — herself a former presidential candidate — and the pair began a secret liaison. Hollande subsequently left Royal, the mother of his four children, for Trierweiler who became the de facto first lady of France after he was elected in 2012, despite the fact the pair were not married.
Hollande’s office said it was “not aware” of the publication of the 320-page book. Trierweiler says that at the beginning, “it was electric between us when we were together”. But Hollande changed, “de-humanised” as he got closer to the reins of power, Trierweiler was quoted as saying by Paris-Match. The memoir, entitled Thank You For This Moment, is due to hit bookshops in France today with a reported first print run of 200,000.
AFP
