Valérie Trierweiler resurfaces - Amber alert averted

Oh but it has been an anxious couple of weeks for the French and in particular the country's media.

Because ever since the infamous Seggers Twittergate affair little has been heard and virtually nothing seen of Valérie Trierweiler.

First up her page on the official site of the French president's office went "whoosh" as it disappeared.

And then the woman herself dropped "discreetly out of view" as Elle magazine (well, what did you expect? Le Monde as a source?) headlined.

She wasn't, as Le Parisien (yes another admirable source. On a roll) pointed out, in London with François Hollande as he sipped tea with Mrs Windsor and shared a carpet joke or two with David Cameron.

And apart from her Mills and Boon-type contribution to a behind-the-scenes look in a book about Hollande's presidential campaign (she wrote the treacly text to accompany Stéphane Ruet's photos) not a squeak or a peep had been heard of her for nearly a month.

Worrying times indeed.

Heck even the international media was concerned with the Italian daily Corriere della sera getting in on the act and reporting that Trierweiler had vanished.

It was all too much.

A country firstladyless and desperate for news of its number one journalist.

Rumours - as they always do in such cases - began circulating.

Some maintained Trierweiler had been seen, rag in hand and scarf tied around head to protect her lustrous mane, cleaning the windows of the Elysée palace. Penance for bad behaviour?

Others insisted she had been sent away on a retreat to contemplate her navel, work out a strategy for making amends and think about what a naughty, naughty woman she had been.

But apart from unsubstantiated gossip, her real whereabouts remained a mystery.

"Where was she?" was the anxious yet silent cry that could be heard not just in France, but around the world.

It was almost enough to launch an Amber alert, don't you think?

Well, the answer can now be revealed.

(Drum roll please)

Calais.

Valérie Trierweiler makes the front page of local daily Nord littoral)

As the local daily (hey, she clearly knows how to make the news) Nord Littoral reported in its Tuesday edition, Trierweiler was seen...wait for it...drinking coffee in a café last week in Coulogne, a suburb of the northern French town of Calais.

She had apparently been visiting a centre for handicapped children run by the partner of a soldier killed while on duty in Afghanistan in June.

And the details of her reappearance were oh so very far removed from the juicy ones the French have all come to love and expect in the short time she has been their first thingamajig.

She reportedly brought her own food - very normal, don't you think?

The national media hadn't been informed ahead of time and in fact the centre only discovered Trierweiler would be paying a flying visit half an hour before she turned up.

The gentlest of gentle reintroductions to get her back into the swing of things with the feeling that the nation can now give a collective sigh of relief that Trierweiler is ready for a comeback deserving of her status.

And that'll be at the weekend when she appears at Hollande's side during France's annual display of military might and pride at the Bastille parade in Paris on Saturday.

And then it's off to Avignon for a spot of culture (her newly-discovered speciality at Paris Match, the international weekly news magazine for which she works) at the city's festival.

Relief indeed.

The French will be able to  sleep more soundly in their beds at night.

Welcome back.

Valérie Trierweiler's behind-the-scenes look at François Hollande's presidential campaign

It can't be easy being a first lady, trying to carve out a role for yourself and at the same time wanting to remain an independent working woman.

And one thing's for sure, Valérie Trierweiler isn't making life simple for herself.

First there was an apparent behind-the-scenes apology for that infamous Tweet she sent last week in which she lent her support to Olivier Falorni in his battle against Ségolène Royal.

Seggers was the Socialist party's "official" candidate for a parliamentary seat in Charente-Maritime which Falorni thought he deserved to be contesting and...oh you probably know the story by now but just in case you can read about it here.

All right, "apology' might be exaggerating a little, especially as Trierweiler's humble "I made a mistake" is reported as second hand information.

You know the sort of thing; an unnamed source and a friend of Trierweiler's to boot, telling the national daily Aujourd'hui en France - Le Parisien that she (Trierweiler), " Had miscalculated the effect her Tweet would have upon the president's authority, the Socialist party, her children and those of François Hollande."

Anyway that was last week's news and is behind us - for the moment.

But clearly, even when saying nothing, the ever-retiring Trierweiler, resolute in her decision to be a working first lady, is destined to make the headlines.

And this week it's the publication of her new book.

Actually that's a bit of a stretch too because all she has done is provide the words to go along with a photo reportage documenting something (or someone) close to her heart: François Hollande's presidential campaign.

Hollande has written the preface to pictures taken by photographer Stéphane Ruet but it's Trierweiler who steps in to provide a running commentary (in the first person) and quite frankly she reveals herself to be a lady of letters - the Mills and Boon variety with a healthy dose of venom thrown in.

Ruet's photographs capture Hollande in some very "normal" moments at different stages throughout the campaign - by himself or surrounded by members of his team.

But because they clearly can't speak for themselves, Trierweiler puts them into context in a manner befitting that of someone clearly at ease with the power of the pen.

"A private diary" (of sorts) is how Reuters describes it with the emphasis seeming to be on how Trierweiler feels at certain moments and her interpretation of Hollande's reaction to events such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York.

Perhaps her best line though is left for the rally in Rennes; the one where Hollande, as the party's official candidate, appeared on stage for the first time with Seggers.

"There has been a lot of speculation about this over the past week and plenty of photographers have turned up," she writes.

"The question fellow journalists are asking is 'Will they kiss or shake hands'. Yes the man I love had another woman in his life before me. And it just so happens that she was also a presidential candidate," she continues.

"Je fais avec," she concludes, proving to everyone perhaps exactly the contrary.

"François Hollande président, 400 jours dans les coulisses d'une victoire" is surely a must for any coffee table.

Perhaps, given the number of photos in which Trierweiler also appears, three extra words should have been included in the title - "et Valérie Trierweiler".

Whatever - hurry out to your nearest bookstore now or order it from Amazon while stocks last!

Could Trierweiler be to literature what Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was to music and film?