France`s former first lady Wednesday broke her silence over the tempestuous end of her relationship with President François Hollande, detailing her horrified reaction to the news he was having an affair, reports Zee News.
In a kiss-and-tell memoir written in secret and due to be published Thursday, Valérie Trierweiler spills the beans on her relationship with Hollande and the painful and sudden break-up in January after a magazine revealed his sensational affair with actress Julie Gayet.
"Everything I write is true," she says on the cover of the book, called "Thank You For This Moment", which is set to do little to improve the image of Hollande, already France`s least popular president in history according to opinion polls.
In extracts released Wednesday by glossy magazine Paris-Match, the 49-year-old former journalist details the bust-up in the presidential bedroom when she realised she had been cheated.
"The information on Julie Gayet is the top headline in the dailies...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 magazine.
"François 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 feel the storm about to break over me and I don`t have the strength to resist. I want to flee. I lost consciousness," she continues.
The 320-page book "is a cry of love as well as a slow descent into hell, a plunge into the intimacy of a couple. Two people and nothing more: Valérie and François," the weekly writes.
Hollande`s office said it was "not aware" of the book`s publication. "So by definition we have not read this book," a source close to Hollande told AFP.
Read more of this AFP report published by Zee News.